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.
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31.01.03 Transmediale 03: Play Global!.
On February 1st, at the Haus der Kulturen der Welte in Berlin, opens the edizione 2003 di Transmediale, an international media art festival. This year the chosen payoff is ‘Play Global!’, attempting to focus on the cultural and artistic reactions to the problems of globalization, following the subjects touched in the latest edition of Ars Electronica. The opening speech will be delivered by Sarat Maharaj, a prominent critic in the field of analysis of artistic actions and of the structures of meaning concerning the post-colonial and connected world. The eponymous conference of the festival, featuring Coco Fusco, Brian Holmes and Marko Peljhan, will deal, with the participation of sociologists and theorists, with the cultural strategies for the global game. ‘Global Game Utopia’, on the other hand, will deal with the political, social and military use of videogames, with Jackie Stevens, Natalie Bookchin, James Der Derian, author of ‘Virtuous War’, Birgit Richard and Jutta Zaremba. ‘Home Electronics’ attempts to analyse the local importance of electronic music, with David Toop, Susanne Niedermayr and Fran Ilich. In ‘Archaeology of Computing in Russia’ will be reconstructed the surprising parallel history of the development of computer science in Russia, and ‘Mapping the World’ will follow the typical trend of the last decade in visualizing data maps, as in the ‘Minitasking‘ and ‘Amsterdam Realtime Project’ projects. Other important events will enrich the programme even more. There will be: a surrogate of ‘I love you‘, an exhibition of computer virii held in Frankfurt last May, the presentation of ‘The Tulse Luper Cases’, the last film, dvd, book and exhibition by Peter Greenaway, then Oliver Ressler with the italian Dario Azzellini with a documentary on the ‘Disobedients’. Finally, awesome and commendable is the work of coordination with other structures of the city which put up related initiatives. From the sound art exhibition ‘Soundservice’ at the Podewil, to the Schoenwehrs collective and their graffitist robot Hektor in a performance at the Galerie Wieland, to the personal exhibition of Jodi, named ‘Install.exe’, at the BueroFriedrich. One must not forget also the awards with the 900 competing works and the five winning projects which will share out the 5.000 euro prize, while the Club Transmediale, that is, the musical part which will be held at the Maria am Ufer club, mostly during the night, deserves a separate mention. Among the many names present during these nine days there will be Negativland, Scanner, Pan Sonic, John Oswald, Coh, Eu, Gameboyzz Orchestra Project, Thomas Brinkmann, Ultra Red, Si-Cut.dB and Monolake.
