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 – Oktaf
The GRM (Groupe de Recherches Musicales) is located in the headquarters of Radio France in Paris and is now part of the INA (Institut National de l’Audiovisuel). For over fifty years, the famous institution founded by composer Pierre Schaeffer, has run a unique sound laboratory and collaborated with a variety of experimental composers and researchers . Throughout a two-week residency in the centre during the winter of 2009, composer Marsen Jules had unbridled access to the vast collection of analogue instruments GRM have in their collection. The result can now be appreciated in Marsen Jules at GRM. This was to be a decisive experience for the German sound artist, who is also incidentally an excellent dub-techno DJ. The project was carried out and mastered with the help of another prophet of drone music and personal friend of the artist, Taylor Deupree. Jules has also recently released the album Beautyfear on Oktaf, a score designed for a theatre in Lisbon. Marsen Jules at GRM features two tracks, one of eighteen and one of sixteen minutes approximately. The soundscape of GRM is extremely minimal. This is a hypnotic continuum that does not admit defections; it is all encompassing. To play devil’s advocate, one could argue that all of GRM’s fancy equipment and vintage electronics are not audible between the grooves of the release. Nonetheless, we were fascinated by the compositions and can only conclude positively, stressing how the balance of elements is maintained throughout. If it’s sometimes a little spare, it’s still engaging.
Marsen Jules at GRM | Album Trailer | (Oktaf09)
