Neural

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Neural is a print magazine founded in 1993 that focuses on new media art, electronic music and hacktivism. It was founded in Bari, Italy, by Alessandro Ludovico and Ivan Iusco, owner of the Minus Habens Records label. The first issue (November 1993) featured William Gibson's Agrippa (A Book of the Dead) in the Italian translation.

The first topics covered were: cyberpunk (both as a literary and political movement), electronic music, networks and BBS, virtual reality, media, science fiction and UFOs. The magazine's mission was to be a magazine of ideas, to become a node in a larger network of digital culture publishers. The magazine was also committed to giving its themes a suitable visual framework: it focused on graphic design and how it could express electronic culture in a kind of printed 'interface', while exploiting the 'sensory' possibilities of the printed page. For example, the page numbering was strictly binary for 3 years, then decimal numbers were added. There was a section with stereogram images and the centrefold featured some optical art. The graphic design included a fixed space in each article for contact and links, inspired by the Whole Earth Catalog experiments.

In issue #18 the centrefold was dedicated to a hacktivist project. It involved fake stickers created by the Italian network of hacker labs. These stickers sarcastically simulated the real ones, which must be affixed to every book or compact disc sold in Italy under the law supporting the SIAE, the local authors' and musicians' society. The one published on Neural reads "suggested reproduction on any media".

The first Neural website was created in 1997 and was updated daily from September 2000.

In 1998 the themes were limited to three: media art, with a particular focus on the networked and conceptual use of technology in art (so-called net.art); hacktivism, or activism using electronic media to express itself; and electronic music, exploring how technology is involved in music production, consumption and experimentation.

In May 2002, Neural was one of the founding members of Mag.net, electronic cultural publishers, an international network of magazines whose motto is "collaboration is better than competition". This network was founded during the conference and workshop "Post Media Publishing" held at the Universidad International de Andalucia in Seville, Spain. Since then, several Mag.net meetings, mutual workshops and presentations have been held in different countries and three Mag.net readers have been published.

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

In 2007 Neural was part of the documenta 12 magazines project and Alessandro Ludovico was appointed as a consultant.

Neural magazine began as a bimonthly, since 1997 it has been published three times a year (some years irregularly). It was originally printed in Italian, since 2003 there have been two different printed editions: in English and in Italian. (2023)

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