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.
LP – Dischi Fantom
An unusual union was created from the meeting of essayist, editor and translator Ginevra Bompiani with sound artists Caterina Barbieri and Tomoko Sauvage. The result is an original narrative with an allegorical-classical slant, where the relationships between sound, words, voice, media, and technology are explored through orality and poetry, with texts that belong to the world of fable and myth. The techniques implemented – as opposed to sound poetry where semantic and syntactic values are not necessarily central to the composition – reference the structures of twentieth-century radio plays, with sound effects replaced by sequences that are more abstract and hieratic, stimulating the imagination towards even more expressive storytelling. The four stories presented are read directly by Bompiani and were recorded by Francesco Cavaliere, a visual artist, writer, musician and experimenter interested in imaginary and metamorphic universes. The release sees the light of day on Dischi Fantom, a label and ETS association headed by a curatorial group that produces exhibitions, publications and research projects dedicated to photography, visual arts and sound, and follows on from its brilliant recent work with the Soundwalk Collective. Il Calore Animale has also been broadcast by Radio Raheem from its headquarters at the Triennale di Milano. Two of the songs by Caterina Barbieri, the title track and ‘La pariglia’, mark a return for the Bolognese experimenter to classical guitar, deploying rippling arpeggios, refined patterns and melodic elements. More inclined towards a stylistic approach is Tomoko Sauvage, who composed, performed and recorded her interventions at INA GRM (Groupe de Recherches Musicales) in Paris, and demonstrates her experience and excellence in working with hydrophones and the sounds of amplified water. This limited edition of just 200 copies is also accompanied by a very special booklet, with texts in Italian, French and English, completing this fascinating, interdisciplinary collaboration in the best possible way.
Ginevra Bompiani, Caterina Barbieri, Tomoko Sauvage – Il Calore Animale
