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 – Nur/Nicht/Nur
“Maarten Slow And Quick” is the opening track of the new album by Florian Wittenburg. Since 2011 the composer has released a lot of works with Nur/Nicht/Nur, the same German experimental label who published the last project, Four Waves. After over a minute of silence, the sonority hammers hypnotically into the listener, with a delicate and pulsing touch, following an inspiration that this time is only apparently unintentional. The following first part of “Petite Magie Des Voix” requires a change of perception in listening practice, because some micro-harmonies and a quite complicated vocal background fully infuse the track. Recognizing these elements is possible only if we reset our capacity to presume the possible sources of the sounds. “Morse2minor” in its treatments is a thin song, but it owns an aestheticising feature, thanks to the absence of points of references. “Color Und Talea” hits with its modulations, thanks also to the flute contribution by John Devitt, with the regularity of the rythmic models and the emphasized and symmetrical melodic development. “Minor2morse” asks us to once again sharpen our sound perception. The perfect duo made by the vibraphone of Daniel Hamburger and the basic electronics of Wittenburg may seem improvisatory, and actually the performers don’t clarify the nature of their work process. Some elements seem to originate from free forms but we will never able to know if this is due to a millimetric plan or the result of the partnership and the development of the recordings before the definitive making. The Berliner Florian Wittemburg studied Music Technology and Instrumental Performance in the Netherlands at the Utrecht School of Arts and later majored in Paris at the Centre de Création Musicale Iannis Xenakis. He worked with different instrumentalists and developed some performance projects with a large range of creatives (including for example also a sculptor). The ability to synthesize a music tradition from the historical avant-garde and the contemporary and electronic approach make this artist always very interesting, and his scores are always very controlled and sensitive.
Florian Wittenburg – Album Daily Drone Dream
