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.
Similar to what Philip Dick told us in 1956, in Minority Report, our ‘smart cities’ are now trying to become “safe cities”. There are a lot of IT companies already working with the various military forces, creating mapping systems that record and catalog criminal acts. And there are plenty of online platforms and apps that let you access your city map and, for example, check a certain neighbourhood before buying a house, or before moving there… More recently, software developed for law enforcement agencies implements so-called ‘predictive policing’, integrating external and internal data in order to identify trends in criminal activity, and in turn predict where such activity might occur in the future and deploy services accordingly. Although this software promises to radically change police activities, it faces rising criticisms for the use of historical training data, focusing only on street crimes and perpetuating prejudices against already damaged areas. “White Collar Crime Risk Zones” developed by Brian Clifton, Sam Lavigne and Francis Tseng for The New Inquiry Magazine is an artwork designed to trigger a strategic debate and to turn on the spotlights on the disparities and prejudices that the above mentioned models implement in contemporary society. Using data from the Financial Regulatory Authority from 1964 to present, the work uses a machine learning algorithm to predict where financial crimes in the United States are most likely to occur, shifting attention from street crimes to white-collar (middle class) crimes. It therefore identifies places with a risk of crimes such as unauthorised trading, or breach of fiduciary duty. In a navigable map, red areas will indicate high-risk zones, and yellow areas moderate risk zones. A practical App can then help users to move around the city safely, notifying the dangers of, for example, nearby ‘auction disturbances’ which should be avoided, and the potential density of such crimes in certain areas, with all the due consequences… Benedetta Sabatini
Sam Lavigne – White Collar Crime Risk Zones
