From April 7-11, the 8-Bit Music Exhibit was held in the Clark Commons, Shapiro Library. 8-bit music, also known as chiptune, is any music created on retro game audio hardware or anything made to sound like it was. Visitors could learn about the history of 8-bit music and experiment with the sounds and composing techniques themselves. Dr. Toni Bushner, a lecturer at the Digital Studies Institute (DSI), was one of the key organizers of this event. Bushner’s involvement and love for old tech, specifically in 8-bit music, seems like fate, as she was born at the exact time that the Game Boy was released. In the following interview, Bushner describes what’s happening in the chiptune community today.
[Responses have been edited and condensed for clarity.]
What is your affiliation with the DSI, and what attracted you to the program?
I’ve been with the DSI since the Fall of 2020, and I am a full-time lecturer. What drew me in was its interdisciplinarity. I love that the department pulls people from so many different disciplines, and it really shows in our dynamic course offerings. I initially tried applying to English departments, but “weird digital stuff” is not the purview of a lot of English classes, as most are more literature-focused. It was serendipity finding the DSI; I couldn't ask for a better department.
For those who may not know, what is 8-bit music?
8-bit music refers to a specific era in gaming and early PC history, primarily situated in the 1980s. Sound was rather limited at this time, compared to today, when our computers can make any number of noises simultaneously. For example, the Nintendo Game Boy, the most popular device for making chiptune music, can produce only four sounds at once.
What’s fascinating is how artists are using this retro game audio hardware today. There are pretty extreme limitations on what you can do on these old devices, both in terms of the processing power and also how many tones you can make at any given time. As a result, the hardware has interesting stylistic influences, as composers have found ways to work around those limitations and make those limitations work for them rather than against them.
What is the chiptune community like?
Chiptune is an incredibly niche form of music making. There's a good chance that if you're into chiptune, you may be the only person in your geographic region who is trying to produce it in the first place. Primarily, people are gathering online on forums to share this music. We're so distributed across the world that teaching this in person is difficult, so we make videos, cheat sheets, and guides to help others. By and large, it's a pretty welcoming community; we're just happy that someone wants to listen to the weird beeps and boops.
The community is also incredibly queer. Specifically, trans people are heavily represented relative to the broader population. Trans people are approximately 1% of the U.S. population, and about half of the chiptune artists I’ve met are trans. As part of the exhibit, I created a video compiling interviews from six trans artists.
I invited open speculation of, “Why is this community so dang trans and queer?” The answers they gave were so varied and beautiful. One of my favorite answers came from two of the interviewees, who both independently compared the chiptune community to Anime Club as a gathering of social outcasts, people just thrilled to find others who love this weird, specific thing. At the end of the video, one of the artists said something that really sticks with me: “We’ve been forced to embrace the 21st century . . . we’re making the computers sing. We’re doing it all online, and we’re creating ourselves.”
Chiptune has always kind of flown under the radar, and when visitors discovered that folks are doing this, we were met with surprise and amusement. The reactions that I was excited about were when I saw a little fire start in visitors’ eyes when they learned that they also have the capabilities to compose this music.
How does nostalgia factor into the use of this older technology?
For some chiptune artists, nostalgia comes from growing up with these sounds. Great memories are tied to these devices and playing these games, so they want to keep them around. There’s also pushback against the myth of technological progress. Just because Sony, Microsoft, and Nintendo have made better graphics doesn't necessarily mean that those systems are better. Sometimes, limitations are strengths. It forces composers and game designers to be creative; that’s where the magic happens.
There's a reason why there's a retro revival in the Indie game scene of people doing pixel art games, harkening back to some of these genres that aren't as popular on newer consoles. It's more approachable than trying to make photo-realistic graphics. You need a powerhouse computing device to do that and a big ass team to make those super complicated games. Don't get me wrong, modern titles are interesting and fun in their own right, but you can be more experimental when you go low-resolution. You can make a simple little game in your bedroom by yourself if you want to, and do something weird that might have a huge impact in the gaming world.
We’re also capable of producing innovation when we look back at old technology. For my undergrads, retro to them is the Nintendo GameCube, a sentence that makes a new wrinkle form on my forehead every time I say it. But they, too, have gone back to the depths of gaming history for some of these early titles and have found interest and joy in them.
And there’s a deeper yearning, too. Early internet culture was full of optimism—the idea that this tech would democratize knowledge and increase access. Now, with surveillance capitalism and the exploitative financialization of the gaming industry, it’s easy to feel like we missed the future we were promised. Chiptune and retro tech let us imagine what could’ve been. It’s nostalgia as critique, and also as hope.
Do you see this exhibit returning in the future?
Absolutely. We already have ideas for how to improve what we’ve already made. One visitor is doing incredible work with the Game Boy camera. It would be great to start highlighting other kinds of art that are being made with these old consoles.
We also had a series of concerts that were associated with the exhibit. We brought in chiptune artists Norah and NMLSTYL (pronounced “Animal Style”) for our show at the Neutral Zone. It was logistically challenging, but totally worth it. I’d love to bring in more artists to show the incredible variety of sounds and types of music-making. People think of chiptune as video game music, but chiptune isn’t a genre; it’s a methodology for making music. There's chiptune house, ambient, and metal music. There's even an album of Chiptune sea shanties!
I'm excited to continue researching and showing other people that this old tech is actually cool. Just because it's less sophisticated than what you have in your pocket right now doesn't mean interesting things didn't happen there, and that interesting things still aren't currently happening there.
If students are interested in learning how to make chiptune music, Dr. Bushner dedicates a unit to chiptune in the course, DIGITAL 258, “Fanfiction, Theorycrafting, and Prosumer Communities,” which will be offered in the Winter of 2026.
To learn more about the exhibit, read a walkthrough of the 8-Bit Music Exhibit here.
