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.
2×12″ – Makiphon
awholerunboom is the debut album of MME dUO, namely Patricia Koellges and Tamara Lorenz, on Makiphon, an experimental label from Cologne Koellges run with Andreas Oskar Hirsch. The couple provides a passionate sound collage, whose matrix is rhythmical and electronic. The four sides of the double vinyl are dedicated to the different seasons of the year. The two experimenters use a broad range of instruments and devices: small synths, loop machines, diapason, electric bass, drums and vocals. It’s a complex setting developed to draw together a tendentious apparatus of domestic electroacoustics, which is also accompanied by some interesting videos and characterised by a strong formal avant-garde tone. The overall effect is variegated and surprising. “Sweet Cold Night” is humming and almost cinematic, thanks to the spatialised and alien constructions. “CutCut” is estranging and minimalist, a bit crooked and uneven and with inserts of deaf bells. “RZCK”, longer than the other tracks at 10 minutes, is focused on some insistent drums, set in an industrial and stinging drone. “Transmission” demonstrates a spoken word approach and refers to certain sound poetry, while “Agent A” is penetrating and sci-fi. The noises are hard to identify; it’s unclear if their origin is natural or artificial. We remember Patricia Koeliges and Tamara Lorenz for their work with Julia Bünnagel. Using the moniker Sculptress Of Sound, the trio previously released the album Spectodrama on Makiphon. In contrast to that work, here they appear to be less dense conceptually, but more focused on electronics, ambient music and improvisation. There are different sources of inspiration. Perhaps they first tried their material live to develop their best ideas, which are used to finish the single tracks, maybe also additionally re-edited during the final phase of post-production. The duo closes the album with “HipWig”, one of the most introverted tracks, nonetheless showing some playful elements, which reminds us that it’s possible to stay “light” even at these latitudes of style.
MME dUO – awholerunboom
