8-bit renaissance in art, music

The 8-bit world in brief

The term pixel art was first coined by Adele Goldberg and Robert Flegal at the Xerox Palo Alto Research Center in 1982. The concept goes back 10 years earlier to Richard Shoup’s SuperPaint released in 1972 by Xerox.

eBoy is an art group often referred to as the “godfathers of pixels.” It was founded in 1997 by German artists Kai Vermehr, Steffen Sauerteig and Svend Smital. Based in Berlin, eBoy’s founders collaborate with Peter Stemmler in New York to produce graphic designs for Coca-Cola, MTV, VH1, Adidas, Gola and Honda. Their complex illustrations have appeared on posters, shirts, souvenirs and at gallery exhibitions.

New York artist Nathan Sawaya extends pixel art from computer to Lego bricks. He first came to attention in 2004 when he won a US nationwide search for a professional Lego Master Model Builder. Sawaya had his first solo art exhibit in the spring of 2007 and his works have been collected by 10 US museums.

Before the 2000s, 8-bit music was rarely performed live except by Coin. Songs were traded exclusively as executable programs or similar computer formats. The first record label releases of 8-bit music can be found in the late 1990s.

The 2000s brought a new wave of chiptune culture, boosted by the release of software such as Little Sound DJ for the Game Boy. This new culture has more emphasis on live performances and record releases than the tracker culture, of which new artists are only distantly aware.

Essential 8-bit sites
8bitpeoples.com – a record label publishing chiptunes
hello.eboy.com – pixel art found in the wild
brickartist.com – the website of Nathan Sawaya
chiptune.com – a huge collection of chiptune music
16dimensional.com – a publisher of Creative Commons-licenced chiptune malbums