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 – Protagoniste
The clarinetists Xavier Charles and Jacques Di Donato had already worked together in the nineties, releasing also an album, “Du Slavon Glagol”, published in 1996 by Khôkhôt. Now they are back for Protagoniste with fourteen new compositions, →
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 →
CD – Monotype Records
Under the Monotype Records brand (it is exactly their ninety third release) Christian Kobi collects for the occasion three compositions on tenor sax, one on soprano sax and for the fifth (the central in the album) →
CD – 1703 Skivbolaget
In the last few years there seems to be a return to some free form and improvisation styles. The reasons are not clear, but the themes played in between the expressive freedom and the formal structures →
CD – Doubtmusic
The album presents eight tracks recorded at GOK Sound in Tokyo under the supervision of DJ Sniff and Yuen Chee Wai. We can openly say that the artists involved in the project are the most interesting of →
CD – Zarek
From Zarek, a German label which has reached its sixteenth release, here’s a dilated, flowing and elegiac composition by Perlonex, an electro-acoustic trio composed of Ignaz Schick, Joerg Maria Zeger and Burkhard Beins. Its recording has been →
LP – Aussenraum
The Aussenraum release is available only in 300 copies on 180g red vinyl with a cover by Flokim Lucas, a Korean-French multidisciplinary artist and at the same time a charming and talented illustrator. Mei Zhiyong is famous →
LP – AussenRaum
Stacja Nigdy w Życiu is the LP debut for the duo of Kasper T. Toeplitz and Anna Zaradny. They are respectively a composer and a musician of Polish origin. Toeplitz is one of the most important personalities →
3 CD box set – Sofa
Tempo is a very interesting 3-CD box set published by Sofa and recorded live during a 4-hour performance held at the Rothko Chapel in 2013. The jam was led by the improvisation trio Mural: →
CD – Amorfon
We are at the extreme borders of experimental jazz and free form, where they collide with different musical wisdom and expertise. Jorge Queijo is a Portuguese drummer, Hiroki Chiba is a Japanese bassist and Yoshio Machida is →
