Apparatus Zine Project responds to the powerful slogan “We become what we behold. We shape our tools and then our tools shape us”, attributed to Marshall McLuhan. Through this theme, students explore and express their personal perspectives on the current relationship between creativity, technology, and the interplay between humans and machines.

As part of the project, parallel sessions took place simultaneously in Cambridge and Istanbul in October and November 2025. The Illustration students from CSA Cambridge, Mimar Sinan Fine Arts University, and Koç University will collaborate on a zine for the symposium in Istanbul that will take place on November 21–22.

Using contemporary and emergent digital creative and communication technologies alongside juxtapositional “handmade” and “low-fi” technologies, this project introduces the concept of the “Human Printing Machine”. In teams, students were asked to “hand-produce” a limited-edition zine to be distributed at the symposium. Aligned with the symposium’s emphasis on practice-based research and “thinking through making”, this project unfolds over three weeks through a series of workshops. These sessions include live-streamed lectures, collaborative online exchanges, and hands-on printing experiences using basic analogue techniques, thereby highlighting the performative and creative potential of the simplest printing methods.