Asemic: a technocritical e-zine

Asemic is a creative/critical e-zine using the format of an experimental Internet publication to critique technological advancements. Through open calls that connect coders with writers and artists, we create interactive, multimedia writing projects, reflecting the zine’s interdisciplinary format and self-published ethos in a digital age. We take as our starting point an antisocial media: to investigate the materiality of the browser and reverse engineer the (addictive, destructive, or otherwise imminent) mechanisms of the contemporary & future web. We are open-source, owning & sharing our tools and platform. Even in the age of the bot-driven internet, we seek a freer, more self-directed web through this tiny corner of compute. The practice of the magazine is alternately utopian, through its embrace of open-source ethos, and apocalyptic, through its speculative subject matter. We view technology as an open question, and invite diverse, recursive modes of questioning technology.

The inaugural issue, to be published in Fall 2026, is titled “Sleeper Agents:” an exploration of growing computational intelligence, and its potential to supercede humanity’s control. Coders, writers, and artists are invited to submit project proposals or to express their interest in collaboration. In open-source publication, the practice of the e-zine is inherently social, a chance to connect artists to new collaborators and communities. We welcome web-based documentation of activist and performance projects, providing a virtual space to archive and adapt otherwise ephemeral, real-world activities. The site also has a historical archive of net art and an index of other e-literature and experimental publishing platforms, fostering intentional curation and networked community. The editorial and archival practice is essential to the zine’s practice of bottom-up canonization through hyperlinks. In the ecological rot of datacenters and the Dead (or Dying) Internet, we seek networked methodologies of care.