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.
The loss of reference points in the open sea affects our equilibrium, both physically and psychologically. Seasickness is a kind of vertigo, triggered by the feeling of instability in both our body and the liquid environment we are in. Commissioned →
We live in a dark age. While this phrase emerges from the middle ages … any excuse is good. Culture? Dark age. Policy? Dark age. Humanitarian rights? Dark age. London, one of the most popular European capitals, wanted to start →
Deep Sweep is a low-cost aerospace probe that intercepts the transmission signals between Earth and the stratosphere, specialising in signals sent to satellites by drones and UAV. The project was conceived and designed by Julian Oliver, Bengt Sjölen and Danja →
There seem to be a Canadian school of audiovisual performances involving electronic music, light and transparency, which maybe will be acknowledged in the future involving a few different artists. “Soft Revolvers” by Myriam Bleau seems to belong to this scene →
There’s still a small percentage of people, especially in western culture, who might think that their public image is not dependent on their online presence, and there should be even fewer people thinking that social media are not a compelling →
We are immersed in invisible radio waves, almost all the time. This is a matter of fact in every city or town, with scientific studies divided on the possible physical consequences. We can trace the visualisation of electromagnetic waves to →
Varvara Guljajeva & Mar Canet define their Data Drops as a “data sculpturing project”. It uses data from a survey about people’s emotions towards personal data being used by third parties and matches them to a colour according to Robert →
While the industry is building the commercial “Internet of Things,” embedding transmitters and tiny devices in objects of various shapes and sizes, other industrial objects are being produced, acquired and becoming obsolete. The perception of obsolescence is relatively subjective, but →
Despite real time communication (in text, audio, pictures or video) the physical distance from a loved one is still deeply perceived by our bodies. The Space Between Us is a very simple but powerful conceptual app by David Horvitz that →
Audio recordings of a voice evoke a person and also the period when that person has that specific tone of voice. In our analogue past, tapes were the most popular repositories for voices, as they were personal and cheap media. →
