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 – 901 Editions
Haptic, the experimental group comprised of Steven Hess, Joseph Clayton Mills and Adam Sonderberg, return with their eighth album, Ladder of Shadows. Since forming in 2006, the trio have traversed the boundaries between composition and improvisation while performing concerts, creating site-specific installations, participating in residencies and working with a diverse range of creative collaborators. Hess, Mills and Sonderberg have also recorded solo work for different labels including Editions Mego, Relapse, Touch, Thrill Jockey, Kranky and Another Timbre. Ladder of Shadows is released on Fabio Perletta’s 901 Editions and features three compositions. ‘We Too Just’ offers an intricate introduction consisting of ringing bells paired with a piano, all amplified as the piece progresses to form a repetitive yet enchanting flow. This is followed by ‘Once’, an ambient-drone piece featuring frequencies folded into hypnotic and bewitching feedback. The meditative tempo of the final track ‘And Never Again’ is set by a metallic synth working in contrast to an unstable melody, pulling the listener into a slow, pulsating vortex. The album was recorded in one session with the sounds later manipulated and reassembled. Olivia Block and Salvatore Dellaria also play an integral part in this release – Block plays the organ on the first track, while Dellaria performs on analogue synths throughout all three compositions. As is typical for 901 Editions releases, the album’s packaging is remarkable and features an elegant six-panel digisleeve designed by Mote Studio.
Haptic – Ladder of Shadows
