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 – Kvitnu
Oksastus is a precious reprint of a historical release by Pan Sonic. It was originally published by Kvitnu in 2014, four years after the group officially disbanded. Their last official album, Gravitoni was released in 2010, while Oksastus is actually a live performance, which took place in Kiev on June 6th 2009. However, no elements in this release suggest it might be not be their studio production, given the total absence of human elements or background noise. Oksastus is a Finnish word meaning a process of graft or cultivation of plants. Similarly, Mika Vainio and Ilpo Väisänen’s sound grows from a hybridization of several elements. The duo became cult figures in the most experimental electronics scene, known for their industrial, ambient, techno and brutal noise crossings. The packaging is the same as the original version and designed by Kateryna Zavoloka. As is the case with the first release, the vinyl edition includes two white 12”, but now in addition there is also a CD version, packed in a specially produced cardboard cover printed with metallic paint with an additional hot foil pressing and UV-lacquering. It’s hard to give a short explanation for why they became so iconic, although listening to their discography and the impact they had on electronic music gives us a hint. At the time of this release in 2014, Mika Vainio was playing solo at Init Club in Rome in front of an audience of only 150 people, despite having more solo publications and features than his artistic partner, Ilpo Väisänen. After the group disbanded, Väisänen almost completely disappeared from the scene. Unfortunately, Mika Vainio passed away on April 2017 when he was only 54. Creativity and innovation are the key elements this group is lauded for.
Pan Sonic – Oksastus
