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.
The project Italian_Hacktivism_and_Art , realized by Tatiana Bazzichelli (AHA) for Read_me Festival 2004 , consists of a plagiarism of the work made by the famous map.jodi.org netartisti jodi.org. The map shows the different connections between Hacking and Art in Italy, starting with the idea that these concepts are closely related, especially if the focus of the interpretation are the hacktivist practices and the wider network of the Italian netculture. The real significance of the project, whose interface shows a map of different realities, collectives and artists in Italy, is still in the source code (source code) that is "behind" the graphics. By reading this, you can see how the groups are linked into categories that reflect the iterpretazione scenario by the author. These links start from the number (1), and that 'the middle on the map hacktivism (hackmeeting are present and all hacklabs Italian). From what, winding several other experiences that go hacking article, up to the number 15 (following a path that goes from the center to the left to the right). There are collective and reality 'that belong to the scene hacktivism but not limited to: the following code, you also get to actually' a bit 'more' away from this concept, however, are more 'or less related to interests and field of action. The author starts from the idea that hacking is really a form of art and who does hacktivism puts in place a trial on inguaggio, the code and the newspaper that goes to create a new social and cultural model. The map not only shows in fact a network of reality, but a different approach that sees the code "culturally oriented" as many works of art testify software. Following this point of view, are shown the IP addresses of some Italian, highlighted with an icon of a computer if have their own server. When there are close links between projects, the icon is rather that of a running rabbit. Icons and code are one in showing the idea of the network, inviting them to perform numerous other rip-off of the map of jodi, so as to create a more 'largest network formed by different mental connections of many other users.
