Machine Zine Issue 1
Our first publication is hot off the press!!!
We are very pleased to launch Issue 1 of Machine Zine, a new publication from New Media Art Club.
To make a zine about human–computer interaction in 2026 is, almost inevitably, to make a zine in the shadow of generative AI.
The current cultural language around AI often encourages mystification. Systems are described as if they think, imagine or create with autonomy. Rather than accepting the machine as an opaque source of wonder, the contributors to Machine Zine examine it as a material, social and cultural system.
Issue 1 brings together work by Andy Jenkinson; Denise Pardon Benitez and Sebastien Durand; Sean Clark; Savannah Irving; Paul Mazzitelli; and Timothi Ellim. Their contributions move across legacy technology, web identity, image culture, analogue drawing machines, artistic practice, interactive systems and the social conditions created by machines.
Machine Zine is about machines as systems of constraint, negotiation and perception. It is not just about AI, but the longer cultural and artistic history of machines: analogue computers, drawing machines, ZX Spectrum sound, web identity, image generation, sensors, rooms, rules, interfaces and artistic practice.
Machines have never simply helped people make things. The machine as frictionless assistant has never existed. In practice, machines shape the conditions of making, imposing systems that inevitably mark the work produced through them. This is true whether the work takes the form of an image, a sound, a drawing, a performance, an archive, an avatar or an online persona.
The issue explores human–machine relations after the fantasy of frictionless technology. Across its articles, it argues that machines are not neutral tools. They are systems with histories, biases, material behaviours and cultural effects.
Machines are not external to culture. They are cultural systems. Artists should not merely use them, but test them, resist them, expose them and work with their limits.
Issue 1 is available now. Our Big Cartel shop is live!
We are also currently looking for stockists. Bookshops, galleries, project spaces and other organisations interested in carrying Machine Zine are invited to get in touch.