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 – esc.rec.
All the compositions in this new album by Francisco López for esc.rec. date to 2019 and were recorded in Den Haag, Milan, Riga, Prague, Mmabolela and Loosduinen. They are brought together here to resonate in a coherent and cohesive collection. Here we find the meticulous attention to detail the composer is known for. Sounds are always controlled, elegant and refined, whispered accomplices of a dream narrative. There are several natural field recordings, but it’s unclear to what extent these have been processed or manipulated. Many are strange, insect like buzzing, darker aftermaths, an airplane, perhaps streams, storms and rains, all set in an elaborate sound design, with repetitive pulses and low hums, balanced by elements that are sometimes brighter and sharp, sometimes silent. It is difficult to talk about the works of Francisco López without getting involved in unnecessary lyricisms in support of what we have heard. Perhaps this is the reason why the experimenter does not like to offer further explanation, notes or visual attachments (the latter, however, are present in this issue in the form of two photographs for the front and back cover, probably captured in the locations of some of the field recordings). Perhaps for the same reason in some of his live performances, participants are asked to blindfold their eyes with strips of fabric. Everything is only in our imagination, far from additional suggestion, personal perceptions are sharpened, mental glimpses of a world only sketched by the author, which needs the additional availability and sensitivity of the listener to complete itself. “Untitled # 371” comes from original environmental sound material recorded in Borneo in 2012. “Untitled # 372” is the soundtrack of the film “Aerobiome” by Evelina Domnitch and Dmitry Gelfand, presented at the Het Nieuwe Instituut in Rotterdam. “Untitled # 373” is the result of original environmental sound material recorded in the Mmabolela Reserve (South Africa). “Untitled # 378” is developed from the evolution (without any “remix”) of raw materials provided by the Disrotted Chicagoans. The album is very beautiful, absolutely fluid and engaging.
Francisco López – untitled (2019)
