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.
. Hacktivism 
23/11/02 Stop the war with the PlayStation + Tiny Signs of Hope.
The PlayStation inciting violence? Not really. Here it is used to fight the war and take a stand for human rights. The online campaign ' Buy Bush a PlayStation 2 ', signed Mikel Reparaz, was born with the idea that video games for the PlayStation may have a cathartic function. Following the recent events in American politics and the threat of military invasion of Iraq, it seemed pretty clear to Mikel Reparaz that President Bush is more oriented to satisfy his fantasies bellicose and play the commandos to make a reflection on the real reasons for such a conflict. Evidently, says Reparaz, Bush has never played with the PlayStation 2. Here then is the launch of "The PlayStation 2 Buy Bush Campaign", which included a collection of online fund to buy (and send) to the American president a PlayStation 2 console and a copy of SOCOM: U.S. Navy SEALs, a military- game definitely suited to the tastes of the president. In a short time you have reached the required amount (270 U.S. dollars), thanks to a large membership by the Internet community. At the gift is accompanied by a letter, in which you express puzzlement and concern for the impending war in Iraq and calling on the president to play at war with the PlayStation 2, instead of causing a probable massacre of innocent civilians. At the end of the letter, we read the names of the donors participating in the campaign. But the virtual resistance to the war in Iraq and all kinds of war, is also expressed in other forms. The project Tiny Signs of Hope provides several online tools for Sima community, to "decorate" with virtual posters bearing messages of peace and endurance, your environment Sim. You can download it from the icons to be included in the environment strictly Sim free to express their own political and social commitment in the game. Among the many: Not in Our name, Anarchy Symbol, Do Not Enter Iraq Flag Peace Sign, Do not Bomb Icon.
Tatiana Bazzichelli
