Critical digital culture and media arts · Since 1993
The Neural Archive is a repository of publications collected by us during the years. Browse our collection here.
Sometimes the online world reveals unsuspected parallel dimensions. This is an unknown restyle of Neural independently (and secretly as we never knew about it) made by NY-based Motion and Graphic Designer, Clarke Blackham. Very nicely made, perhaps only a bit glossier for the magazine’s line, it testifies once more how even your most familiar outcomes can have another life somewhere else.
The value of craft after software sounds rampant sometimes, expressing the freedom of escaping repetitive taps and clicks to accomplish some assumed tasks. Mixing media, electricity, electronics, mechanics and inert objects Graham Dunning has realised a structured track/performance/open script in his “Mechanical Techno: Ghost in the Machine Music.” More than a proof of concept a machine music declination.
Isn’t ASCII Art a perfect form of “graffiti” in 2010s? The 8-bit aesthetics is among the strongest visual references connecting the analogue recent past with the omni-digital present, so why not adopt it to finally have some public art embedded in the present? In Varberg, Sweden, 2016, the GOTO80 crew (feat: Karin Andersson) did it, choosing (not by accident) the Mo Soul Amiga-font.
YesNo by Timo Kahlen feels like “traditional” net art, a well crafted stuck webpage for the user’s aural and clickable enjoyment.
The relationship between Andy Warhol and personal computers (becoming quite popular during his last years) has been only partially investigated beyond his Amiga works. In November 2015, Sotheby’s sold his “Apple (from Ads)” (acrylic and silkscreen ink on canvas) for 910.000 USD, and in catalogue’s notes Warhol tells about his meeting with Steve Jobs insisting to give him one and showing him how to draw (even if still in black and white): “we went into Sean [John Lennon’s son]’s bedroom–and there was a kid there setting up the Apple computer that Sean had gotten as a present, the Macintosh model. I said that once some man had been calling me a lot wanting to give me one, but that I’d never called him back or something, and then the kid looked up and said, ‘Yeah, that was me. I’m Steve Jobs.’ And he looked so young, like a college guy. And he told me that he would still send me one now. And then he gave me a lesson on drawing with it. It only comes in black and white now, but they’ll make it soon in color…I felt so old and out of it with this young whiz guy right there who helped invent it.”
Harsh Noise Wally, is a sophisticated mashup mixing strips of Wally, the lazy and cynic colleague of Dilbert with some epic noise music extreme attitudes. Well conceived and assembled.
Minority Report comes closer… Three huge screens at Birmingham New Street railway station are scanning passers-by and play advertisements accordingly. http://www.birminghammail.co.uk/news/midlands-news/new-street-station-advertising-screens-9920400
GoPro ancestors in the 1960s and 1970s, mainly sport and movie persons like F1 driver Jackie Stewart, Bob Sinclair and Steve McQueen.
. Hacktivism 
12:07:02 H2k2, hackers on Planet Earth 2002.
Two years since the last edition, opens July 12 at the Hotel Pennsylvania in New York H2k2, Hackers on Planet Earth 2002 , the dense three-day conference sponsored by the American historical review of hacking 2600 – the hacker's quarterly, L ' seminar list is very long and includes among others, 'The Argument Against Security Through Obscurity for the Non-Digital World', on the application of open source model also to the real world, 'Bullies on the Net – The Ford and Nissan Cases' on power of the corporation on the net, with the cases of Mr. Uzi Nissan sued by the homonymous carmaker to hold his dominion and the Ford Motor Company who has lost the case with the magazine 2600, 'The Conscience of a Hacker', in which The Mentor will read live the eponymous historical essay 1986, 'Cult of the Dead Cow Extravaganza' of the same name whose controversial crew of hackers will present the announced software 'Camera / Shy' for the exchange of prohibited content through the web by applying steganographic techniques, 'The DeCSS Story' dedicated to rebuilding the history of this important affair ended, unfortunately, bad, 'Domain Stalking' on cases of disputes relating to domain names, 'Face Scanning Systems at Airports: Ready for Prime Time?' of the fallibility of facial scanning systems used in airports Americans as anti-terrorism measure, 'Freedom: File Not Found', systems of government control on information in the network, such as the hardware used in China to monitor and censor information or tactics routing in Saudi Arabia to allow government control of content, 'Fucking Up the Internet at ICANN: Global Control Through the Domain Name System and How to Escape' with Andy Mueller Maguhn (Chaos Computer Club) and Paul Garrin (name. the average free space +!), 'GNU Radio: Free Software Radio Collides with Hollywood's Lawyers' on GNU Radio project that wants to build a platform for experimenting with radio software, systems in which the waveforms transmitted and received are defined by software and not hardware particular, 'Hacking the Invisible World' on everything you need to know about scanners, frequency counters, pager, night vision, intercepting / spoofing of radio frequencies, electronic surveillance, 'How to Start an IMC in Your Town ', what to do to usher in a Indymedia in their city,' Human Autonomous Zones: The Role of Real Hackers ', The Role of the hackers in the society in a debate with Doug Rushkoff,' Negativland – Past, Present, Future ', with Mark Hosler who will explain some of the actions of activism, jokes and pranks that the group has carried out over the years, including some rare video of the band,' Owned ', a new film about the Hacker Culture, produced and directed by Jennifer Read, and seminars based on all technical issues most discussed by the social engineering steganography, by retrocomputing to cryptography. Awaited, finally, an intervention of Jello Biafra, author of the famous phrase 'Do not hate the media, become the media'.
