I’m currently spending a few surprisingly pleasant days in Linz for the jury of the Prix Ars Electronica and Alessandro Ludovico, the editor of Neural magazine is here as well. I keep marveling at what i call his generosity but he would rather define it as ‘marketing ploy’. He came to Linz with this big bag full of fresh issues of Neural magazine and gives one of them to almost each and every member of the various juries. When i object that he should not distribute so lavishly magazines that we would very probably buy anyway, he keeps coming up with all sorts of answers that range from “but they shouldn’t have to pay for Neural!” to “Maybe if they read the magazine they will get a subscription so that’s just a selling tactic.’ All i know is that i’ve never subscribed to Neural because of Alessandro’s liberality.

Here’s a few words about the 32nd issue of Neural.

The main fields covered by each issue are new media art, emusic and hacktivism and i’m going to do a jumble of them in this quick overview of the magazine.

Neural has a mix of short news (about the length of the stories you read in the online version of Neural) and more in-depth coverage of issues as diverse as polymorphic intelligence, sex & love with robots, machines that play drums and other musical instruments or media art in New Zealand. And of course there are interviews of significant artists, such as France Cadet, Ken Rinaldo Douglas Irving Repetto, Ralph Schreiber and Survival Research Laboraratories.

Instead of a pinup gracing the centerfold, you get an installation, this time it’s The Inverted Machine by Ralf Baecker. Finally, neural is the place where you can read about new books, dvd and cds.

To get a copy of Neural you can either come to Linz and grab a copy from Alessandro’s magic bag, subscribe and never regret it, or locate a store that sells it.