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 
09:07:02 Seized Domains blasphemous.
After a complaint of L'Osservatore Romano, the Special Unit for the broadcasting and publishing of Rome of the Guardia di Finanza has seized domains www.porcamadonna.com, www.porcodio.com, www.bambinello.com, www. bestemmie.com and www.bestemmia.com. The respective sites, defined as 'highly offensive to the religious sentiment and the Catholic faith', are owned by a company for the marketing of clothing with written blasphemous, which were sold online and at a store in the center of Rome. The charges are: offenses against religion of the State by means of vilification of people offended by insulting the religion of the state of things, computer fraud, publication and obscene performances, acts and obscene objects. The military body has heralded two years of investigations and the ability to be intervened on material physically located at providers of the USA (Washington and California) using the same computer seized, previously used by the heads of the pages. In reality regarding the charges of aggression against the state religion just as it now exists for two years 'defamation of religion of the State' was declared unconstitutional because the Catholic religion is no longer the state religion. In addition, the sites have been shut down only in their home page, as you can see by going directly to the inside pages . To finish the Radical MEP Marco Cappato was the first to react to this latest outrage against freedom of expression. According to the deputy "Having the resources used for 20 months of the Guardia di Finanza to go in pursuit of blasphemers online corresponds to a stupid choice of priorities in the use of 'yellow flames', as well as a blatant violation of freedom of expression." The same Cappato immediately aware of what is going to ask through a parliamentary question to the Council and the European Commission, the Italian Government and particularly the Minister Tremonti of actions that are in full contradiction with the fundamental principles now also guaranteed by the EU Treaties. The deputy concluded that the radical sites are siposti to accommodate the censored content.
