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.
Each year artists, gallery owners, collectors, curators and critics from around the world gather in Basel to attend a series of contemporary art fairs. Although the most significant of these is undoubtedly Art Basel, there are a number of satellite →
Neural #46 extra is the “first 20 years” poster (70cm x 100cm), with all the covers, and a QR code pointing to a pdf file narrating the history of the magazine (only for subscribers).
CDr – Winds Measure
Suikinkutsu No Katawara Ni is the latest work by Lawrence English and is published by Winds Measure, a Brooklyn label focused on experimental music and run by Ben Owen. English is remembered for his work with →
CD – Ahornfelder
Reinterpreting and making connections between scores by Alvin Lucier, Marko Ciciliani, Michael Pisaro and Lars Petter Hagen, this album is a perfect example of Håkon Stene’s “post-percussive” approach. Moving away from traditional drum techniques, the author has →
CD + DVD – NurNichtNur
17 Clips is an interesting and rigorous project developed for CD and DVD by Florian Wittenburg and released by German sound art label NurNichtNur. The album takes its name from the third track and is →
CD – Farmacia901
The first five minutes of the 28-minute-long first track pass in almost absolute silence. We found it necessary to crank up the volume on the mixer and re-listen from the beginning to have any chance of perceiving →
CD – Denovali
Origamibiro is a collaborative project that builds on the meeting of three creative minds: Tom Hill (musician, producer and author of soundtracks), Jim Boxall (aka The Joy Of Box, visual artist and filmmaker) and Andy Tytherleigh (multi-instrumentalist). →
12″ vinyl/Digital Album – Crónica Electronica
This project is authored by Giovanni Lami and Enrico Coniglio, recorded by Miguel Carvalhais and enriched by the charming artwork of Dead Meat. The vinyl edition of Lemuria immediately grabbed our attention with its →
Horror, especially zombie movies, is one of the genres most popular with independent filmmakers on a tight budget. In general consciousness, certain sonorities of electronic and experimental music have also become inextricably tied to the horror genre. It is interesting →
3CD + 48 Pages Book – Entr’acte
Released as an edition of only 300 copies – although this is perhaps not so unusual for a production of this kind – and paired with an ample 48-page booklet, this triple CD →
The feedback we get from a video, or any cinematic artifact is continuous, as every frame reaching our retina alters the state of our brain and our interpretation of the source material. In Simulacra by Karina Smigla-Bobinski, there is a →
CD – Gruenrekorder
The field recordings of Mosaïque Mosaic, collected by Christina Kubisch & Eckehard Güther, were captured in Cameroon and selected on the basis of their ability to evoke the sensibility of this African region. Specific workshops were held →
The latest edition of the Olympic Winter Games held in Sochi will perhaps be better remembered for the international controversy surrounding the racial and homophobic (im)positions of the Russian Government than for the sporting events and the athletes involved. Reports of →
book + CD – Amalgamated Torso and Such
This album booklet is actually a fanzine photocopy and in its first pages the album is literally defined as “a compilation of fluid contributions from various practitioners of the noise arts compiled →
