Underground Culture & Obsolete Futures
The magazine for the technology that outlived its obsolescence. Art, fashion, and hardware from the underground — reviewed with the weight it deserves.
Featured
VISUALS
New media that refuses to stay new. Artists working with decay, signal loss, and the physical residue of digital culture.
Sarah Chen builds sculptures from discarded smartphones — not as critique, but as archaeology. "These objects died before they aged. I'm giving them time."
Rosa Park's new exhibition treats compression artifacts as brushstrokes. The result is painting that looks like it was transmitted, not created — and the transmission is breaking up.
Thirty years after release, Akai's discontinued sampler commands prices that would buy a new car. We spent a month with the machines to understand why producers won't let go.
Somewhere in Shenzhen, one facility still manufactures cathode ray tubes. Their customers: arcade operators, medical imaging, and a surprising number of contemporary artists who need the bloom.
Hardware that outlived its support. Systems that run on spite. The technology stack of the stubborn.
Clothing that references the hardware it was made on. Tech-wear, deconstruction, and the visible seams of production.
Yuki Tanaka embeds actual PCB traces into garment construction. The clothes are functional — until they're not.
The new collection from Berlin's KABEL treats cables as ornament. Fashion that looks like it was repaired in a hurry.