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.
cassette + folding card box and 4 photo cards – farpoint recordings | K7
The Telepathic Lockdown Tapes is a release from Mick O’Shea and Danny McCarthy, an Irish sound art and improvisation duo formed under the moniker The Quiet Club in 2006. The recordings feature a wide range of sounds created using an unusual selection of objects including stones, homemade instruments, electronics devices, theremins and field recordings. The overall effect is quite alienating and dark but not necessarily foreboding, although there is a sense of restlessness and unease throughout the 160-minute work. The album was made during lockdown – O’ Shea and McCarthy would participate in recording sessions from their individual studios at prearranged times. The work was then mixed without any additional editing or dubbing. What is most revealing about such a setup and process is the interactions between the two artists, normally the duo do not discuss or plan the details of their collaborations in advance. This is quite a peculiar approach even within the world of improvisation and one that is based on familiarity, shared musical passion and a strong communicative relationship. It is these same qualities that have allowed the duo to create this powerful work during this unique period that aside from all of the other challenges posed by Covid-19, was also a difficult time for art and the production of shared, creative experiences. This release includes a tape with two twenty-minute tracks on each side and comes in an elegant folding card box which also contains four intriguing photo cards. Four bonus tracks, along with the original tracks from the tape recording and a pdf artwork booklet, are available for download via a code included with the cassette package.
The Quiet Club – The Telepathic Lockdown Tapes
The Quiet Club – The Telepathic Lockdown Tapes
