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.
CD – Sub Rosa
In YZ3Z2Z1S2, a Five-letter Sufi Word, Jean-Luc Fafchamps has arranged a number of musical movements that entail different solo combinations. This is the second project in a specific series made for Sub Rosa by Ictus Ensemble and partners – this time with the addition of the “real-time electronics” of Jean-Marc Sullon and direction from George-Elle Octors and Francis Doppe. The compositions range in length between 7 and 15 minutes – and all of them are splendidly intense and emotionally involving. The different scores have originated from a sort of desire-inspiration of a particular letter, with no preconceived organization or relationship to some unifying logic. Taking inspiration from Sufi wisdom, the keystone of the whole process resides in the mystic ecstasy recalled by the enchanting sounds, which unravel in untempered harmonies, polyphonies and eccentric moods. The album leans in multiple directions simultaneously, crossing a number of musical styles: some passages appear improvised, while others evoke the electroacoustic tradition, tangible in the excellent combo synthony, always responsive to the unpredictable suggestions evoked by each contribution. Each letter is considered as a unique word, but at the same time they are deeply connected to all the others: as matter of fact, the combination of letters to make words was an intentional compositional move. Uniting a purposive togetherness with the freedom for individuality to flourish is a classic element of Sufi wisdom, here presented at the most precious intersection of elements for a musician: the trust in the truth of sounds and their intimate essence. Aurelio Cianciotta
Jean-Luc Fafchamps – YZ3Z2Z1S2, a Five-letter Sufi Word
