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.
Kyle McDonald is well-known for exploring the boundaries of public and private space in our post-privacy world. With his Keytweeter he placed himself under digital surveillance for an entire year, capturing everything he typed with a keylogger and posting in on Twitter – 140 keystrokes at time. His most recent project gives another conceptual twist on spyware. ‘People staring at computers is a simple application that takes a webcam snapshot every minute and uploads it on a website. Kyle installed the software on computers on display in several Apple stores around New York City, collected over a thousand pictures and then launched a slide show on the same machines to an audience of perplexed customers. The material is a physiognomical study of Apple’s consumer base, a collection of candid, sometimes unflattering, portraits of people interacting with their objects of desire. In their mundanity, they are fascinating shots: humans are used to performing in front of webcams, aware of their publicaudience, while products are supposed to be stared at, docile and alluring. The intervention was only meant to be a three-day long experiment but it quickly turned into a complex affair. Days after the deactivation of the software and the publication of the results, four agents from the Secret Service (the branch of the US government who handle cybercrimes) raided the artist’s house and confiscated his computers, iPod and flash drives. Kyle is allegedly accused of computer fraud and could face up to 20 years in prison. The case is generating heated discussions about the limits of privacy: after all, taking pictures in public spaces is allowed, and customers entering a store implicitly agree to appear on security cameras and have their behavior monitored. Would a spin off project that replaces people’s faces with Steve Jobs’ face still be considered computer fraud? And on the top of everything, how can the Secret Service afford to allocate resources to persecute a media artist in a moment when high-profile attacks perpetrated by hacker groups like anonymous, anti-sec and others are happening on a daily basis? Only time will tell if this a tragicomic example of poor judgement or just the way authorities deal with whoever dares to desecrate the cathedrals of consumption.
Paolo Pedercini
