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.
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01.17.03 Geography and the Politics of Mobility.
Inaugurated on January 17 at the Generali Foundation in Vienna ' Geography and the Politics of Mobility ', an exhibition that offers a course in the contemporary arts that have made the interpretation of the territory of their raw material. Curated by Ursula Biemann and theoretical Swiss host five group projects from many international realities very different from each other, which attempt to describe and / or interpret the transformations induced by the increased mobility, migration movements and new job profiles. The Parisians' Bureau dÕétudes', for example, have 'Syndicat Potentiel', display the extended network of data collection systems that exist between individuals, corporations, governments, armed forces, international agencies and citizens' groups. This representation territorial clashes with the traditional one, although probably much more real than that enjoyed by a satellite view. Frontera Sur RVVT, they treat the border between Spain and Morocco where the trades of regular commuters, of illegal immigrants crossing the border by sea, and pattuglianti with their radar constantly redefine the actual border between the two states. Unlike the other projects the Makrolab is a research station and temporary nomad that allows its participants to monitor the flow of data from halfway around the world while being in isolated conditions and illustrates the operations performed here in Germany, Australia and the Scottish Highlands before the next 'mission' in Antarctica. There is also an Italian group (multiplicity) headed by Stefano Boeri, chem while operating from Milan, presents a study on the Mediterranean region and in particular on the coast of Naples. The Raqs Media Collective, finally, use the stereotypes of Indian women telelavoratrici to analyze working conditions related to the sex industry of online businesses, with people who have to continuously move from the online world to the real one. There will also be a seminar with the participation of some of the artists involved and critics ('Maps for the Outside' by Brian Holmes and 'Engendering Terror' Irit Rogoff).
