Neural magazine - AbsoluteAstronomy.com

Neural is a printed magazine established in 1993 dealing with new media art

New media art

New media art is a genre that encompasses artworks created with new media technologies, including digital art, computer graphics, computer animation, virtual art, Internet art, interactive art, computer robotics, and art as biotechnology...

, electronic music and hacktivism

Hacktivism

Hacktivism is the use of computers and computer networks as a means of protest to promote political ends. The term was first coined in 1994 by a member of the Cult of the Dead Cow hacker collective named Omega...

. It was founded by Alessandro Ludovico and Minus Habens Records label owner Ivan Iusco

Ivan Iusco

Ivan Iusco, is an Italian composer, producer and founder of the music label Minus Habens Records.Since 1999 he has written ten film scores...

in Bari (Italy). In its first issue (distributed in November 1993) there was the only translation in Italian of the William Gibson

William Gibson

William Gibson is an American-Canadian science fiction author.William Gibson may also refer to:-Association football:*Will Gibson , Scottish footballer...

's Agrippa (a book of the dead)

Agrippa (A Book of the Dead)

Agrippa is a work of art created by speculative fiction novelist William Gibson, artist Dennis Ashbaugh and publisher Kevin Begos Jr. in 1992. The work consists of a 300-line semi-autobiographical electronic poem by Gibson, embedded in an artist's book by Ashbaugh. Gibson's text focused on the...

book.

The first topics covered were: cyberpunk

Cyberpunk

Cyberpunk is a postmodern and science fiction genre noted for its focus on "high tech and low life." The name is a portmanteau of cybernetics and punk, and was originally coined by Bruce Bethke as the title of his short story "Cyberpunk," published in 1983...

(both as a literally and political movement), electronic music, networks and BBS, virtual reality, media, science fiction and UFO. The magazine's mission was to be a magazine of ideas, becoming a node in a larger network of digital culture publishers. The magazine was also committed to give its topics a proper visual frame: focusing on graphic design and how it could have expressed the electronic culture in a sort of printed 'interface', exploiting at the same time the "sensorial" possibilities of the printed page. So, for example the page numbering was strictly in binary numbers for 3 years, then decimal figures were added aside. There was a department with stereogram

Stereogram

A stereogram is pair of two-dimensional panels depicting the view of a scene or an object from the vantage points of the right and left eyes. Observing the panels superimposed in a stereoscope results in the experience of three-dimensionality by virtue of the fact that object depth is encoded as...

pictures and the centerfold hosted a few optical art artworks. The graphic design included a fixed space in every article for contact and links, being inspired by the Whole Earth Catalog

Whole Earth Catalog

The Whole Earth Catalog was an American counterculture catalog published by Stewart Brand between 1968 and 1972, and occasionally thereafter, until 1998...

experiments.

In issue #18 the centerfold was dedicated to an hacktivist fake. It was made by fake stickers, created by the Italian hacker laboratories' network. These fake stickers were sarcastically simulating the real ones that are mandatory sticked on any book or compact disc sold in Italy, because of the law supporting the SIAE, the local Author's and Musicians' Society. On the one published on Neural is written 'suggested duplication on any media'.

In 1997 the first Neural website was established, and it was updated daily from September 2000.

In 1998 the topics were restricted to three: media art, with a peculiar attention to the networked and conceptual use of technology in art (the so-called net.art

Net.art

"net.art" refers to a group of artists who worked in the medium of Internet art from 1994. The main members of this movement are Vuk Ćosić, Jodi.org, Alexei Shulgin, Olia Lialina, and Heath Bunting...

), hacktivism, or activism using electronic media to express itself and electronic music, investigating how the technology is involved in music production, consumption and experimentation.

In May 2002 Neural was one of the founding member of Mag.net, electronic cultural publishers, an international network of magazines, whose slogan is "Collaboration is Better than Competition". This network was founded during the conference and workshop "Post Media Publishing" that took place at the Universidad International de Andalucia, in Seville (Spain). Since then a few Mag.net meetings, mutal workshops and presentations were done in various countries, and three Mag.net Readers were published as well.

In 2004 Neural.it was awarded with an Honorary Mention in the net.vision category of the Prix Ars Electronica

Prix Ars Electronica

The Prix Ars Electronica is one of the most important yearly prizes in the field of electronic and interactive art, computer animation, digital culture and music...

2004.

In 2007 Neural was part of the Documenta 12 magazines

Documenta 12 magazines

Documenta 12 magazines was a central project of the 12th edition of the documenta exhibition, similar in dimensions and world outreach to the "platforms" of the previous edition...

project and Alessandro Ludovico was appointed as an advisor.

Neural magazine started as a bi-monthly but since 1997 it was printed three times in a year (some years it was printed irregularly). It was printed originally in Italian, but since 2003 there are two different printed editions: in English and Italian.

Neural ISSN: 2037-108X

English edition

Issue #20, Hacktive Community

Issue #21, Breaking the Rules

Issue #22, Facing Reality

Issue #23, Hacking the Air

Issue #24, Geek Girls

Issue #25, Media Interventionists

Issue #26, Disturbing the System

Issue #27, Copyright Guerrilla

Issue #28, Data Error

Issue #29, Digital China

Issue #30, Dangerous Games

Issue #31, Information Value

Issue #32, Machine Affection

Issue #33, Scripting Green

Issue #34, Fake'ology

Issue #35, Friends?

Issue #36, Time Deceptions

Issue #37, Common Spacing

Issue #38, p2p > f2f

Issue #39, Multiplied Identities

Italian edition

Issue #1, Agrippa

Issue #2, Dream Machine

Issue #3, Realtà Virtuali e Guerra

Issue #1 nuova serie, Bruce Sterling

Issue #2 nuova serie, Brain Machines

Issue #3 nuova serie, Videogames

Issue #4 nuova serie, Wired

Issue #5 nuova serie, Intrusioni Cerebrali

Issue #6 nuova serie, BBS copyright non è reato

Issue #10, Telefoni cellulari, i danni biologici

Issue #11, William Gibson

Issue #12, Next World Radio

Issue #13, Dead Media

Issue #14, Scanner

Issue #15, Lassigue Bendthaus

Issue #16, Etoy

Issue #17, RTMark

Issue #18, Marcus Novak

Issue #19, Richard Stallman

Issue #20, Hacktive Community

Issue #21, Breaking the Rules

Issue #22, Facing Reality

Issue #23, Hacking the Air

Issue #24, Media Interventionists

Issue #25, Copyright Guerrilla

External links

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