Neural.it :: media culture, hacktivismtag:www.neural.it,2012:/art/82012-01-30T19:43:37ZMovable Type 3.2The Deleted City, social web archeologytag:www.neural.it,2012:/art//8.92002012-01-30T19:35:47Z2012-01-30T19:43:37Z The project of Richard Vijgen Deleted City is an interactive data visualization of the myriad of data hosted on the free web hosting Geocities, that was very popular at the dawn of the commercial web. The city was the...chiara
The project of Richard Vijgen Deleted City is an interactive data visualization of the myriad of data hosted on the free web hosting Geocities, that was very popular at the dawn of the commercial web. The city was the successful metaphor that characterized this site: the users could easily create their own Web pages and click on the "city" in which they preferred to live based on the type of content ]]>
"digital folklore", but above all we have the opportunity to observe an overall view, impossible to see in the complexities of an unlimited data back up.
Chiara Ciociola
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Stephen Jones , Synthetics: Aspects of Art and Technology in Australia, 1956-1975tag:www.neural.it,2012:/art//8.91902012-01-27T11:11:34Z2012-01-27T11:16:42Z The MIT Press , English, 464 pp., ISBN 978-0262014960 This book is a small gem among the many dealing with the history of media art. Stephen Jones has undertaken an excellent and extensive research project, digging not only into his...chiara The MIT Press , English, 464 pp., ISBN 978-0262014960
This book is a small gem among the many dealing with the history of media art. Stephen Jones has undertaken an excellent and extensive research project, digging not only into his valuable personal archive of Australian media art (patiently assembled over decades) but also sifting through public libraries and private collections. This is neither a dispassionate nor pretentious academic work. It is, ]]>
moreover, an extremely rigorous investigation - the result of years of passionate personal involvement. He begins with the dawn of computer arts in the late fifties and ends with the milestone exhibition "Australia 75", framing events in Australia within an international context. As the author affirms, the domestic scene was not isolated during this period, but actively in touch with contemporary entities in Europe and the U.S. What makes this work impressive is the intertwined history of early electronic devices and the art that developed along with them. Rather than simply 'instructive', the book reveals itself as an essential reference point for understanding this time period. We learn that "it is the display technologies that govern what kinds of art are possible and how it will be seen." Every artwork is effectively contextualized in terms of contemporary festivals, exhibitions, and publications on one side and technical innovation and experiments on the other . The book is fully enjoyable, with plenty of historical material, including never-seen-before original pictures that are unquestionably inspiring.
Versus, sounding dialoguestag:www.neural.it,2012:/art//8.91862012-01-25T16:49:54Z2012-01-25T16:57:24Z Versus is a kinetic sound installation by David Letellier. Its functioning is characterized by an interactive dialogic mechanism. There are two kinetic sculptures that are interdependent and they have to be face to face to make sense. Each sculpture...chiaraVersus is a kinetic sound installation by David Letellier. Its functioning is characterized by an interactive dialogic mechanism. There are two kinetic sculptures that are interdependent and they have to be face to face to make sense. Each sculpture is made out of 12 triangular panels, joining at the center in a flower-like shape with actuators to allow slow movement. In the center of this singular "corolla" there's ]]>
Chiara Ciociola
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Leah Lievrouw, Alternative and Activist New Mediatag:www.neural.it,2012:/art//8.91792012-01-23T09:13:34Z2012-01-23T09:17:41Z Polity Press, 200 pages, 2011, English, ISBN-13: 978-0745641843 Defining new media has always been tricky. Here, the author gives a clear and thorough definition of new media based on three components: the device/artifact which enables the ability to communicate,...chiaraPolity Press, 200 pages, 2011, English, ISBN-13: 978-0745641843
Defining new media has always been tricky. Here, the author gives a clear and thorough definition of new media based on three components: the device/artifact which enables the ability to communicate, the communication activity/practice, and the social arrangements and organizational forms created around the artifact and the practice. This is a strong base that, coupled with an explicit reference to ]]>
"Remediation", the famous book by Bolter and Grusin, is used to develop Lievrouw's extended concept of "mediation", which she suggests both intensifies communication and makes it more participative. Lievrouw ranges over five different fields of investigation: culture-jamming, alternative computing, participatory journalism, mediated mobilization, and commons knowledge. Taking Dada and Situationism as initial reference points, she goes through different classic artworks (by Surveillance Camera Players, RTMark, Jonah Peretti, for example) analyzing the hacktivist initiatives of sharing the DeCSS code embraced by 2600 The Hacker Quarterly magazine and the whole history of Indymedia. According to the author, media activism represents a cultural "turn" which leads to a more contemporary concept of "mediation" as previously explained. What if we're already beyond this turn? In that case, we'll hopefully soon see this kind of consistent analysis applied to the next phase of alternative (new) media, such as the alternative use of social media, the ubiquitous possibilities of mobile digital publishing and the building and sharing of alternative archives.
On Spam, business proposal - urban spam tagtag:www.neural.it,2012:/art//8.91702012-01-20T10:49:28Z2012-01-25T16:38:13Z With the work "On Spam, Business Proposal" Niels Post documents the urban intervention he acted in Brussels with a photographs series . For this action the artist has selected some of the most effective phrases contained in the commercial...chiara
With the work "On Spam, Business Proposal" Niels Post documents the urban intervention he acted in Brussels with a photographs series . For this action the artist has selected some of the most effective phrases contained in the commercial spam messages, the ones that claim incredible and superfast chances for personal gain. He printed these on adhesive vinyl, sticking them on the windows of ]]>
Chiara Ciociola
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Joanna Demers Listening through the Noise: The Aesthetics of Experimental Electronic Musictag:www.neural.it,2012:/art//8.91452012-01-11T10:42:27Z2012-01-11T10:47:10Z 216 pages, Oxford University Press, 2010, English, ISBN-13: 978-0195387667 The stated purpose of Demers in this book is to find a unifying (strictly speaking) aesthetics for electronic music, despite the very different ideologies the different genres come from. Although...chiara216 pages, Oxford University Press, 2010, English, ISBN-13: 978-0195387667
The stated purpose of Demers in this book is to find a unifying (strictly speaking) aesthetics for electronic music, despite the very different ideologies the different genres come from. Although the task would seem too vast, she restricts the timespan considered from the 1980s onwards. 1980 has been chosen because it represents a pivotal moment for democratization of electronic music ]]>
production with the introduction of affordably priced synthesizers, popularized by pop bands on the newborn 24hr MTV channel. The author's encyclopedic knowledge is shaped in very understandable forms and her efforts to find a coherent, step-by-step aesthetic in such a diverse domain are crystal clear and achieved through the definition of "metagenres", or underlying inner differences, like having an infinite palette of sound. She never gets lost and manages to draw a consistent path which is both pleasurable and instructive to follow. The writing is always argued through musical examples: there's even a companion website (username and password are printed in the first pages of the book) which can be used when the correspondent icons appear in the text. Electronic music qualities and contradictions are dissected and the author indulges in the inclusion of some destabilizing examples that cause continual doubts about the (aesthetic) distinction between music, sound art works and pure sound. And even when in conclusion the author goes so far as to define electronic music as alienating, the aesthetic frame she's able to identify is priceless.
Solar Sinter, solar way of thinkingtag:www.neural.it,2012:/art//8.91212012-01-03T12:50:21Z2012-01-03T12:57:27Z Ongoing diminution of natural resources and the urgent need to adopt more sustainabile practices are undoubtedly among the most crucial matters for the world today. As awareness increases, more and more young creators are engaging with this topic, taking...chiara
Ongoing diminution of natural resources and the urgent need to adopt more sustainabile practices are undoubtedly among the most crucial matters for the world today. As awareness increases, more and more young creators are engaging with this topic, taking a critical and active stance by building prototypes and actual alternatives. Markus Kayser is such an example; a young industrial designer
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Solar Sinter, a machine that went a step further, enabling the manufacturing of glass products using not only sunlight but also sand, an element of natural wealth equally abundant in the desert. Replacing laser technology with solar power and power resins with the silica found in the sand, Kayser altered the preconditions of 3D printing and proposed a new form of production process. Glass items are produced as the silica sand is heated to its melting point before becoming solid when cooled. Having been tested successfully for two weeks in the Sahara desert, the machine seems to be the beginning of his research into new forms of solar empowered and sustainable production. And if the deserts of the world do seem too far away for some of us, we need to be reminded that the discussion is not solely about successful experiments on issues of sustainability, but principally about a switch of mentality and way of thinking.
Daphne Dragona
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R. Klanten, M. Hubner, Alain Bieber Art & Agenda, Political Art and Activismtag:www.neural.it,2011:/art//8.91042011-12-28T12:22:24Z2011-12-28T12:26:56Z ISBN: 978-3899553420, 288 pages, 2011, English, Gestalten "Activism" in art has become a fashionable topic, especially after the beginning of the global financial crisis. Critiquing the system, formalizing regrets about the past and expressing fears about an uncertain future...chiaraISBN: 978-3899553420, 288 pages, 2011, English, Gestalten
"Activism" in art has become a fashionable topic, especially after the beginning of the global financial crisis. Critiquing the system, formalizing regrets about the past and expressing fears about an uncertain future have become daily topics for major media. Artists are now also reflecting these feelings (maybe even more than during the sixties and seventies) with an abundance of creativity, ]]>
entering a lot of clichéd territories with no expressive boundaries. Art & Agenda has done a good job of documenting these artistic forms. This is not an abridged handbook for curators, although it's quite curator-friendly and sold as a luxurious hardcover. The book tries to discern five historical and consolidated strategy lines: "The Commercial Aspect", "The Human Element", "Sanctuary", "Think global, Act local" and "History Repeating." Under these labels the five editors have identified areas of consistent conflict that go well beyond the classic "shock and provoke" approach. Public space, for example, is now the most natural environment for many actions and performances, while media are being cleverly and intuitively used as with any other tool. The ideas, delivered with their embedded controversies, come out loud and clear. The value of this book lies in its "curated" aspect, which includes single chapters on a coherent set of different artists, placing stars and the lesser-known side-by-side (100 in total), and building a significant collection whose agenda is probably more ostensible than real, but definitely emotionally incisive.
A Piano Listening To Itself, inducing Chopin in chordstag:www.neural.it,2011:/art//8.90812011-12-20T11:17:27Z2011-12-20T16:14:01Z Moving across two and a half decades from the windy north Atlantic coast of Canada to the center of Warsaw, the large-scale Aeolian instruments of Gordon Monahan form a temporal bridge between the Fluxus-propelled experimental music of the sixties...chiara
Moving across two and a half decades from the windy north Atlantic coast of Canada to the center of Warsaw, the large-scale Aeolian instruments of Gordon Monahan form a temporal bridge between the Fluxus-propelled experimental music of the sixties and seventies and contemporary sound art production. Taking the former’s deconstruction of musical heritage and combining it with an approach ]]>
A Piano Listening To Itself – Chopin Chord. Acknowledging the primacy of culture over nature at the historical site, here the focus shifts away from the natural elements, turning to confront the classical repertoire.
Six long wires were strung between the tower of the Royal Castle and a grand piano placed in the square below. From the tower’s balcony recorded fragments of several works by Chopin were played back into the wires and transmitted to the sounding board of the piano, using electric motors as transducers. Acting simultaneously as telegraph lines, transmitting a signal, and as resonators, modulating it, the wires extended instrument and composition over the site, as if haunting it with a ghost of it’s heritage, physically providing a representation both of the extended duration of Chopin’s legacy and of the distance between the cultural context that produced his music and our own.
Matteo Marangoni
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Antidatamining BOT, financial kamikazetag:www.neural.it,2011:/art//8.90822011-12-14T15:00:34Z2011-12-14T15:10:14Z Since 2006, the RYBN collective has been using the tools of data mining (automated extraction of knowledge from large amounts of data) to subvert its own goals, building unusual representations and analyses of financial and social mechanisms. The project...chiara
Since 2006, the RYBN collective has been using the tools of data mining (automated extraction of knowledge from large amounts of data) to subvert its own goals, building unusual representations and analyses of financial and social mechanisms. The project Antidatamining includes works such as "Flashcrash sonification", a graphic and sound representation of the 20-minute stock market crash ]]>
Chiara Ciociola
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edited by Margit Rosen - A Little-Known Story about a Movement, a Magazine, and the Computer's Arrival in Art: New Tendencies and Bit International, 1961—1973tag:www.neural.it,2011:/art//8.90692011-12-11T14:56:54Z2011-12-11T15:05:08Z 576 pages, The MIT Press , 2011, English, ISBN: 978-0262515818 In the history of media art, Zagreb has definitively been on the map since the very beginning. In 1961 there was a seminal movement called "New Tendencies", which officially started...chiara576 pages, The MIT Press , 2011, English, ISBN: 978-0262515818
In the history of media art, Zagreb has definitively been on the map since the very beginning. In 1961 there was a seminal movement called "New Tendencies", which officially started with a pioneering exhibition curated by Matko Mestrovic at the Museum of Contemporary Art. This international group of (self-defined) researchers were investigating how emerging computer technologies could be used to ]]>
create different forms of art. Their investigations, ahead of their time, dealt with kinetic, abstract, programmed and conceptual art (which lead to the flourishing of computer art elsewhere) in the distinctive cultural environment of cold war Yugoslavia. This large group coalesced, producing artworks, exhibitions, symposium, catalogues and the historical Bit International magazine (written primarily in Serbo-Croatian, English, French, and German), remaining active until 1978. This hefty book is, in ZKM/Mit press tradition, the "exploded" catalogue of a big exhibition held at ZKM in 2008 (the project was initiated by Darko Fritz). It's an encyclopedic systematization of the movement's heritage and includes a large number of documents, original photographs and texts. The excited, active participation seen at the time is enlightening, especially when the technological limits they had to face are considered. Their "art as visual research" motto produced works and debates which can now be seen as a collection of ideas worthy of further study and eventual revamping.
Occupy George, talking dollarstag:www.neural.it,2011:/art//8.90532011-12-07T16:03:50Z2011-12-07T16:12:23Z Printing on (real) one dollar bills (the ones with George Washington) enjoyable and graphically concrete data concerning the distribution of wealth in the United States: this is the premise of Occupy George, a performance created in the wake of...chiara
Printing on (real) one dollar bills (the ones with George Washington) enjoyable and graphically concrete data concerning the distribution of wealth in the United States: this is the premise of Occupy George, a performance created in the wake of the many growing participatory movements born out of the original "Occupy Wall Street." The notes, constituting medium and message with an incisiveness that ]]>
Chiara Ciociola
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Neural 40, The Generative Unexpectedtag:www.neural.it,2011:/art//8.90302011-11-30T11:37:31Z2012-01-10T09:38:51Z The new Neural issue is out. Subscribe now! because only the first 50 subscribers will get the ‘P2P Gift Credit Card’, by Paolo Cirio ---SOLD OUT--- and the new exclusive Newstweek flyer by Julian Oliver and Danja Vasiliev. You...chiara
The new Neural issue is out. Subscribe now! because only the first 50 subscribers will get the ‘P2P Gift Credit Card’, by Paolo Cirio ---SOLD OUT--- and the new exclusive Newstweek flyer by Julian Oliver and Danja Vasiliev.
You can also buy the magazine from the closest of the almost 200 stores stocking it. A back issues pack is available.
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Issue #40, autumn 2011
ISSN: 2037-108X
Centerfold: 'And All the Questionmarks Started to Sing', by Verdensteatret.
interviews
. Frederik de Wilde
. Mark Fell
. Pe Lang
. Timothy Didymus
. Marius Watz
. Mitchell Whitelaw
. Lia
. Martin Fuchs and Peter Bichsel
articles
. Academic Discourse and Text Generators
reports
. FILE PAI 2011, São Paulo
. ISEA 2011 Istanbul
.news: People Staring at Computers, Solar Sinter, Antidatamining BOT, Poser, Occupy George, Sounding Juggling Balls, Sound Tossing, TinyRiot, Urban Audio, L.S.D./Sonic Graffiti, Quantum Parallelograph, Finger-nose, THEREFOREFACES, Glitch Reality II, Electronic Instant Camera.
.books/dvds: R. Klanten, M. Hubner, A. Bieber/Art & Agenda, Political Art and Activism, Leah Lievrouw/ Alternative and Activist New Media, Mirko Tobias Schäfer/Bastard Culture!, Institute Historian T. F. Peterson/Nightwork, edited by J. Grenzfurthner, G. Friesinger, D. Fabry/Of Intercourse and Intracourse, edited by Mario Côté and Brigitte Kerhervé/Archives Sonores, Joanna Demers/Listening through the Noise, edited by Luís Costa & Rui Costa/Three Years in Nodar, edited by Song-Ming Ang, Kim Cascone
/The Book of Guilty Pleasures, Paul D. Miller/Book of Ice, ed. by Thomas Bartscherer, Roderick Coover/Switching Codes, Kate Mondloch/Screens: Viewing Media Installation Art, Stephen Jones/Synthetics, ed. by Margit Rosen/A Little-Known Story about a Movement..., ed. by Jill Scott/Artists-in-Labs: Networking in the Margins
.cd reviews: Ernst Karel, Cm Von Hausswolff, Alexander Rishaug, VV. AA./Table For Six: All Quiet? #3, Mark Templeton, Martin Tétreault + Le Quatuor De Tourne-Disques, Merzbow + Balazs Pandi, Novi_sad, Ostravská banda, Sven Kacirek, Guillaume Laidain, VV. AA./Myths & Masks Of Karol Szymanowski, Burkhard Friedrich, Marcus Fjellström, Martin Neukom, Miguel Prado, mpld, Paul Baran, Philip Corner, Mimosa|Moize. ]]>
Neural 40 extra (2/2), P2P Credit Gift Card by Paolo Cirio --SOLD OUT --tag:www.neural.it,2011:/art//8.90322011-11-30T11:35:31Z2012-01-10T09:40:13Z Neural #40 extra (1/2), P2P Gift Credit Card, (only the first 50 subscribers subscribers) credit card instructions: A limited edition of physical plastic a P2P Gift Credit Cards by Paolo Cirio....chiaraNeural #40 extra (1/2), P2P Gift Credit Card, (only the first 50 subscribers subscribers) credit card instructions:
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Activate it at the Basic Credit Network website and then use it!
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Neural 40 extra (1/2), new exclusive Newstweek flyertag:www.neural.it,2011:/art//8.90332011-11-30T11:30:40Z2011-11-30T18:00:33Z Neural #40 extra (only for subscribers) Newstweek flyer:...chiara
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A limited edition flyer of the Golden Nica winner Newstweek project by Julian Oliver and Danja Vasiliev, with their latest version of propaganda.
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