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 – Doubtmusic
The album presents eight tracks recorded at GOK Sound in Tokyo under the supervision of DJ Sniff and Yuen Chee Wai. We can openly say that the artists involved in the project are the most interesting of the Asian scene, a real network focused on independent musicians and organizers. Regardless of their local traditional genres, it’s still possible to recognize the circumstances and the cultural needs of the many continental regions, where different themes are weaved in a way difficult to consider without a precise contextualization. The Asian Meeting Festival, a hotbed for these artists, was opened in 2005 by Otomo Yoshihide with the hopes well placed to promote a solid creative interaction. This actually worked and the festival has quickly become one of the most important for the noise, improvisation and experimental music in this large and fascinating area of the world. DJ Sniff (Takuro Mizuta), known in Europe mainly for his ability with the turntables, was also the director of STEIM in Amsterdam, a center focused on the research and the development of new musical instruments for electronic performance arts. Under his direction, the institution produced more than a hundred concerts and artistic residence projects. Now in this collection summarizing the 2017 edition of the Asian event, the partnerships are so many as to almost confuse. The list of musicians includes Ryoko Ono, Ko Ishikawa, Son X, KΣITO, Yuji Ishihara, Tavito Nanao, Yong Yandsen, Jojo Hiroshige, Kimiya Sato, Ai Watanabe, Kok Siew-Wai, Nguyen Hong Giang, Krisna Widiathama, and the three above-mentioned supervisors, available to give their contribution to some super-vital sessions. The language barriers or the political tensions between the countries they come from don’t have any influence at all. What matters is the crossing between the multiform experiences, a factor which makes it possible for different musical backgrounds to coexist within the field of free improvisation. The contemporary experimentation in the East does not go only one way – how could this actually be? – but the strong unity of intent can facilitate the positive spread out of the borders of the single nations.
Various Artists – Asian Meeting Recordings #1
