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.
“Not available on the App Store” a viral sticker (which can be bought for 1 dollar or self-made) used to remark difference between material-based and screen-based excitement http://notonappstore.com
Pfft! by Casey Reas is a software meant to preserve the strobe quality of television while abstracting it. http://reas.com/pfft/
“All I know and then some” by Addie Wagenknecht is a big handwriting covering a whole wall with a sequence of repeating sentences starting with “I will not download things that get me into trouble” and ending with “I will not download things” http://placesiveneverbeen.com/index.php/all-i-know-and-then-some/
Mountain by David OReilly, is a “consequential” videogame, as you’re a mountain and your development (which passively lasts for the whole game) is determined by answers to initial questions http://mountain-game.com
The Cave of Sounds by Tim Murray-Browne is an array of eight original musical instruments developed by respective authors and arranged in circle, in order to be played chorally in an installation http://timmb.com/cave-of-sounds/
Shadow Box Attractions (variation 2) by David Stout is an installation composed of a three screens that uses a specific “chamber simulation” to generate drawings. https://vimeo.com/60657228
Tether is a web application by Jono Brandel visualising a Plaid tune that can be influenced by the user, drawing a path (source code is free). http://tether.plaid.co.uk
A music video for the single Music Is Life by the Japanese band SOUR realised by designers Masashi Kawamura and Kota Iguchi, where animations are made with custom CDs used as a phenakistoscope, or as still images which appear to animate when rotating on a disc.
http://lifeismusic.jp/
Click by Shinseungback Kimyonghun, every single click the author did in 24 hours (as an animated sequence of screenshots). http://ssbkyh.com/works/click/
Luxo by Everyware, robot-programmed light sculptures, forms prone to time and recording http://everyware.kr/home/portfolio/luxo/
Brazilian activists hacks packages of World Cup figurines (figurines can be effective media, too) http://oglobo.globo.com/sociedade/ativistas-hackeiam-pacotes-de-figurinhas-da-copa-do-mundo-12523929
Human Error by Victoria Siemer aka Witchoria, Mac OS X notifications and warnings used for sentimental life https://www.behance.net/gallery/15086645/Human-Error-(Ongoing-Series-Updated-Weekly)
Tablet and QR code, the museum of the future: finally the (sarcastic) synthesis between compelling technology and mandatory visit to the museum.
Is the Art World Starting to ‘Get’ Digital Art? Maybe but mostly the wrong one, judging from this article on Vice http://motherboard.vice.com/read/the-art-world-is-starting-to-get-digital-art
