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.
LP – Aussenraum
The Aussenraum release is available only in 300 copies on 180g red vinyl with a cover by Flokim Lucas, a Korean-French multidisciplinary artist and at the same time a charming and talented illustrator. Mei Zhiyong is famous in the impro and free form scenes: this live performance confirms how his sound might be dark, powerful and full of ragged and digital solutions. The sound sequences are in the live supported by a simple but effective plant, full of lights and confusing flashes, disturbing projections and moments of dark. The sounds seem to be fragmented into an unbearable landscape and evoke some apocalyptic and cathartic rituals. We found this in the NOJIJI collective projects, a 30 elements ensemble whose Mei Zhiyong was a leader. The two live in the LP were recorded in Cave 12 in Geneve in September 2015 and at LUFF (Lausanne Underground Film & Music Festival), in the Canton Vaud capital, an event which took place in the Autumn of the same year . The sound plots don’t show any hesitation or distinction: the constant assault is the focus. Anyway, despite the choice of an estranging effect in the sound production, the style choices can be very different or related to different theories and concepts, which are not casual or due to a spontaneist naïveté. In the past seasons these experimentations had several mutations and we can affirm that every decade has its own main references, maybe unexplored in the latter past. This changes the entire scenario and it’s a positive evolution. The geographical origin of the artists changes also our viewpoint. In the past, it was impossible to imagine a Chinese noise (however we can’t forget we had already known the Japanese noise tradition) and the meeting of different culture is undoubtedly a great creative improvement. Mey Zhiyon
