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.
Book + CD – 901 Editions
Gradual Small Fires (And A Bowl Of Resonant Milk) features five separate pieces by Steve Roden. The work was commissioned by the New Media School in the University of Hong Kong. The institute invited →
The MIT Press, ISBN: 978-0262044257, English, 384 pages, 2020, USA
With all the research and publications popping up recently, we might proclaim a new scholarly field: ‘Early Art and Technology Studies’. This book faithfully reconstructs important →
Justine Emard‘s Supraorganism is an installation of robotic glass sculptures triggered by a machine learning process based on data from bees. The artist has created a system that abstracts the behaviour of bees and reacts to the presence of the →
2CD – Editions Mego
How is it possible to decipher the most important auditory characteristics of a sound emission? During his career as a composer, Hecker has carried out several research projects. For this reason, in the past he used →
Onomatopee, ISBN: 978-9493148277, English, 144 pages, 2020, The Netherlands
Esther Venrooij has written this book in the style of a personal narrative, seamlessly combining events and inner thoughts with concepts, theories, facts and descriptions →
Bees, butterflies, wasps, beetles and other pollinators essential for plant reproduction are the basis of our ecosystems. In the food production process, over 75% of the main agricultural crops depend on various levels of pollination performed by these animals. This →
10″ – Ediciones Éter
Yubartas is released by Ediciones Éter, the Colombian experimental label of Miguel Isaza and Alejandro Henao. There are three compositions that Ross dedicates to underwater field recordings of humpback whales, a species of mostly coastal whales →
Bloomsbury Publishing, ISBN: 978-1474280457, LINGUA, 310 pages, 2020, USA
In literature, small publishers embody freedom of expression and the possibility to explore forms and content free from commercial pressure. In music, this role has been →
/roʊˈdeɪoʊ/ Let’s Play: HOLLYWOOD by Cory Arcangel is a super computer that plays and learns to play in real time “Kim Kardashian: Hollywood”, an Android video game in which the goal is to gain more and more fans to become →
CD – Gruenrekorder
Composer Hannes Seidl and media artist Daniel Koetter have worked together for more than a decade. In the past, their musical performances focused on works of art and free time, then later on the mechanisms of financial →
Ediciones Uniandes, ISBN: 9789587749533, Spanish, 264 pages, 2020, Colombia
Dear Spanish-speaking friends, in spite of the long delay, it is very gratifying and honoring for me to publicly announce the Spanish edition of the book →
McIntosh Gallery, ISBN: 978-0771431425, English, 84 pages, 2020, Canada
Early computer art, especially that pre-personal computers, is often seen as a simple and primitive collection of experiments that primarily tested the technical possibilities of →
Inside Inside by Douglas Edric Stanley is an interactive installation for one player and multiple viewers. Two screens and a controller invite you to play Inside this famous Playdead video game. The story is set in a dystopian future where →
LP – Dialogo
Cramps was an Italian label founded in the early seventies, mainly focused on progressive music, but also active in the nascent contemporary scene at that time. Among its historical releases was an unmissable reissue of the series →
