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.
2CD – Penultimate Press
Using the acronym C.D., this project recalls Colonia Dignidad, the German evangelical sect accused of abusing minors in Germany, which then moved to Chile in 1961 to freely continue its training activities. Outwardly, the community seemed united and devoted, with well-organised cultural activities and social assistance. In reality, oppression, sexual abuse and exploitation were practiced within it. With the Pinochet regime, the sect inserted itself into the system of terror of that time, actively contributing to the repression and torture of political prisoners. The project C.D. transforms this story into a sound exploration: through documentary recordings of witnesses and with melodic improvisations that translate into sound the impressions of terror, tension, claustrophobia and fear associated with the colony. The fusion of first-hand testimonies and musical interpretations creates a complex narrative, immersing the listener in an emotionally intense and disturbing atmosphere. The recordings have undergone many changes – speed, intonations, loops, harmonic and tonal variations – so that the eleven tracks of CD 1 and the sixteen tracks of CD 2 each represent a tightly woven overall composition. The MIDI files were reproduced with a wide range of virtual instruments, including pianos, guitars, turntables, cylinder organs and synthesizers, each subjected to further manipulation to intensify the perception of tension and disorientation. Improvisations do not follow predefined patterns: each musical choice arises from the desire to evoke, through sound, physical and psychological sensations related to the experiences of witnesses – a place and time marked by fear. Eyewitness recordings are integrated with the compositions, creating a dialogue between historical memory and artistic interpretation. The listener is transported into an immersive experience, in which the boundaries between documentary, music and psychology overlap, making the listening at once stimulating and unsettling. Ralf Wehowsky, creator of the project, founder of the group P16.D4 and curator of the experimental label Selektion, has collaborated with artists such as Merzbow, Jim O’Rourke, Lionel Marchetti and Kevin Drumm. His experience and his radical approach to composition allow C.D. to combine historical content, sound research and experimentation into a coherent work, capable of truly engaging the listener.
RLW – C.D.
