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.
“Communicating Bacteria” is an installation inspired by biological research on the flow of communication between bacteria. It is the result of a collaboration between the artist Anna Domitriu, (for a long time engaged in research on microbiology and collaborative practices) the microbiologists Paul Simon and John Park, and the video artist Alex May. The communication within the bacterial colonies is critical for the survival of the species and it is realized through specific biochemical processes that occur both within the colonies themselves and externally. In the case of the Chromobacterium violaceum CV026 bacterium, for example, this exchange of information has a clearly visible consequence: in fact this bacterium is white in its inactive state, but turns purple when it receives a communication from peers. This specific phenomenon was the aesthetic start of the installation “Communicating Bacteria”: Chromobacterium violaceum colonies were used as a (living) dye for textiles. These bacteria were instilled in a finely embroidered tissue and well-soaked in a broth. Here the spread of communication between bacteria (with its typical and colorful wake) has created an elegant decorative pattern over the entire dress, turning it into an original and unique map of the complex flows of communication. The final result is an installation made from the dress with its sinuous purple decorations, placed on a mannequin and caressed by the 3D video projections that redesign the paths followed by the organic motifs. The choice of the dress as a support for the design of the bacteria is significant. It is in fact a very strong representation of the concept of convention on which our society is founded, which distinguishes us from animals and to which we are all more or less subjected. The installation protagonist is the dress, which is so finely embroidered and elegantly enlightened by the ever-changing trails; lit, like a living microcosm. Translated in this delightful and charming aesthetic form, the dress seems to have a life of its own, which you can enjoy undisturbed, discovering the scintillating beauty that the communication flows can create.
Chiara Ciociola
