The Disengineering Society

The Disengineering Society is a hardware hacking collective in Brooklyn, NY. They run workshops teaching participants to build electronic musical instruments from salvaged electronics, while publishing handmade educational textbooks paired with their sessions.

The Disengineering Society is a hardware hacking collective running workshops that teach people to build electronic musical instruments using salvaged electronic waste. Participants turn old vapes into working microphones, hack children's toys into screaming synthesizers, and coax beautiful cascading sounds from discarded hard drives. They also publish handmade educational textbooks—playful, workshop-specific manuals that pair with their hardware hacking sessions. The central question animating everything they do: What happens if we start from decay rather than growth when thinking about technology? At the core is an ethos of combatting planned obsolescence, challenging apathetic relationships to technological consumption through hands-on, collaborative work.