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 – Domizil
Hiding behind the moniker Strøm, the duo formed by Guadenz Badrutt and Christian Müller investigates abstract sound constructions, utilizing many stylistic approaches. In this latest work they have arrived at →
Jamie Allen has used a classic strategy to connect two very different dimensions, the very intimate and the very public, maintaining their respective integrity in a →
CD – 12K
Simon Scott, newly published by 12K, is a sound artist hailing from Cambridge, an English city also home to Keshhhhhh Recordings, another worthy label dedicated to ethereal digital music. →
Black Dog, ISBN: 9781907317293, 192 pages, 2011, English
Beyond the abundance of discourses concerned with our becoming more like cyborgs (the extending of our abilities through various technological means and having our →
CD – Aagoo
Philippe Petit is not new to revisiting contemporary music tradition: as a journalist and activist he can boast of almost three decades →
With the exponential growth information online, corporations and governments have stepped up efforts to control, regulate and track this information. Those who, conversely, have always supported the freedom of speech have continued to →
CD – Murmur
Using field recordings, a multiscreen projection and other rarefied sounds, Yann Novak & Robert Crouch have created a fascinating narration with multiple concatenations and measured minimal →
Current, ISBN: 9781617230028, 256 pages, 2011, English
In the 2000s one of the most influential (yet mostly silent) social phenomena involving digital media was the so-called “Makers”, whose name derived from the →
CD – Gruenrekorder
In this release for Gruenrekorder, Rodolphe Alexis, a Parisian experimental sound artist and designer, accustomed to the manipulation of field recordings and meticulous editing, has created stereo sequences using →
CD – Touch
Novaya Zemlya by Thomas Köner is made of abstractions that do not condense into a tangible construction. The continuum is very perturbing and is diluted in barely audible frequencies. →
Moving beyond ubiquitous 2D visualizations of sound, Juan Manuel de J. Escalante (Realität) proposes a series of 3D sculptures that explore a new direction in the visual representation of music. “Microsonic Landspaces” is →
CD – Nexsound
This work is based on fascinating generative sounds, sensually moving between hyper-vivid structures. These are developed through patterns organized in multilevel textures that are rich in sudden changes →
Palgrave Macmillan, ISBN: 9781137026668, 208 pages, 2012, English
The title of this book very effectively synthesizes a complex essence in a few words. Gere is here investigating how digital technologies, despite their →
Pen Drive USB/Micro SD – Comatose
It takes around 15 minutes to copy the 15.66 Gb of audio files, videos and texts to our hard disk. This memorable release by Terre Thaemlitz →
