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 – Chmafu Nocords
This interesting electroacoustic release includes three compositions by Katharina Klement from 2014-2015. The tracks accurately conform to the large and eclectic catalogue of Chmafu Nocords, a non-profit label that promotes experimental and anti-specialist approaches. All three →
Irene Posch and Ebru Kurbak are not new in interweaving media and textiles, creating original works that mix them for activist purposed (The Knitted Radio). Their “The Embroidered Computer” uses historic gold embroidery materials and specific knowledge in craft to →
Art Book Magazine, ISBN-13: 978-2821600959, English, 194 pages, 2018, France
In digital art, one of the first reference point is the (im)materiality of the subject with the many repercussions it has in its creation and design. This has led →
CD – Mikroton
Angélica Castelló and Jérôme Noetinger are not new names in the international experimental scenes. Castelló is a Mexican composer and sound artist, famous for her musical research on themes such as fragility, the world of dreams and →
Jaime E Oliver’s “Caracoles iv” is a project that extends the scope and physical properties of an ancient Andean musical instrument: the pututus. It is a conch shell that used to be played by cutting the apex of its spire →
Tate Publishing, ISBN-13: 978-1849763691, English, 224 pages, 2018, UK
This is the catalogue of an excellent exhibition, held at Tate Modern, historically reconstructing the relationship between abstraction and photography. Organised into four periods, this history →
CD – Sofa
The saxophonist Espen Reinertsen and the trumpeter Eivind Lønning have played together since 2005 under the moniker Streifenjunko. Apart from their studio works and their work with the Christian Wallumrød Ensemble, they have performed in different international →
A hybrid of organic and inorganic elements, animated with kinetic electronics can easily seem as though it might come to life. Hye Young Sin’s “Time-piece” perfectly fits with this observation. The installation is a six-meter long small, kinetic world made →
Duke University Press, ISBN-13: 978-0822370604, English, 312 pages, 2018, USA
Stemming from the recent tradition in digital humanities, there is a new field of studies tentatively assembled in this anthology and defined as →
CD – Twin Paradox
In Cosmo Tengri, the Kazakh sound artist Angelina Yershova is deeply engaged in the terrestrial ecosystem: deforestation, sustainability and the preservation of nature. In the video that accompanies the album’s first track, “Korgau”, the refined experimentalist →
Soon, human manual labour may no longer be necessary. Perhaps machines, thanks to the development of artificial intelligence, will perform even intellectual work. The Institute of Human Obsolescence critically explores this scenario: how can we reinvent the role of humans →
Univ. Of Minnesota Press, ISBN-13978-1517904111, English, 232 pages, 2019 USA
In the utopian phase of the early commercial Internet, it would have been hard to predict the current scale of online conflicts. Within the →
LP – Gruenrekorder
Kuhzunft-slotmachine is the brainchild of Achim Zepezauer, a musician, composer and organiser of events. It originated as a website project, focused on an image of a child-like slot machine, painted with pastel colours. Clicking on the →
One area of investigation for VR might be the kind of relationships we develop with three-dimensional anthropomorphic (or nonhuman) objects. “Cricoterie” is an enthralling work by Michaël Samyn & Auriea Harvey, the virtuosic duo who previously developed several alternative video →
