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 – Thrill Jockey
Mouse On Mars’ Dimensional People is a 2018 album that featured interventions from 50 musicians who subsquently formed an orchestra that included percussive robots and special apps for smartphones, resulting in an intriguing live performance. This was in part due to MoMinstruments, a software package developed by the musicians and in part to the particular ‘spatial’ mixing technique defined as “object-based mixing” employed. This new work AAI marks a conceptual evolution from the former project. AAI is an acronym for Anarchic Artificial Intelligence, and builds a subjective reflection on this controversial topic. The writer and professor of African American studies Louis Chude-Sokei made a significant contribution to the project. In an essay included with the release he deals with topical issues related to the industrial-scale and frequently unregulated use of artificial intelligence. The future perception of history and memory, for example, are described by mixing rigorous writing with speculative fiction, as well as providing living material for the traces, as in “Speech and Ambulation” where he says, among other things: ” we still don’t know what the machines want ”. Everything is supported by the usual verve of St. Werner and Toma (interviewed in Neural #16, long time ago), who model atmospheres with dynamic and unexpected components, often with the feeling of a pure soundtrack. The sound part also consistently required adequate technical support, provided by the independent design and AI studio “Birds on Mars”, together with Ranny Keddo and Derrek Kindle, former programmers of the Soundcloud platform. Together they have created custom software (“Krach”) capable of modelling spoken language together with the machine. This in turn has become a ‘live’ tool, both for recordings and for live performances. In addition to Chude-Sokei, DJ Yağmur Uçkunkaya also lent his voice to the project along with longtime collaborator and percussionist Dodo Nkishi. The project does not ignore graphic design, with yet another prestigious involvement. Here, Casey Reas, artist, academic and co-creator of the essential programming language Processing was called on to develop it. Reas (who also created the cover of the special issue for the 25th anniversary of Neural), contributed to the digital archive of the project at https://anarchic.ai. Here you can enjoy his generative videos, in addition to the remaining materials, such as reading the aforementioned essay prepared for the album and testing the Krach software, as well as downloading an audiovisual installation in software (app) format. The final result reflects the different artists that composed it: the unmistakable, fluid and at the same time broken style of the MOM emerges together with the stimulating texts, the elaborate voices, and the geometric forms in kinetic movement and chromatic rhythms, for an often-sublime experience.
Mouse On Mars – AAI
