Toshiba RT-8890 Bombeat 16 — Boombox, Hamburg, 2009

The Toshiba RT-8890 Bombeat 16 represents the precise engineering phase of the boombox era: technically well defined, structurally controlled, free of stylistic excess. The device combines Japanese industrial aesthetics with functional authority. Frontal order, clean symmetry, and a restrained material presence give it a calm yet resolute visibility in public space.

All boomboxes were photographed to scale, frontally, and aligned on the same baseline. This consistently identical perspective does not neutralize individual differences; it makes them legible. Size becomes attitude, proportion becomes character, design becomes expression. The result is a visual system of comparability in which each device appears as an autonomous personality within a shared order.

The work is part of the series “Boombox – The Golden Years 1978–1983” within the Zeitgeist body of work. The series understands boomboxes as cultural markers of an era in which music left the private sphere and became a collective experience. Eight batteries meant autonomy. Weight meant presence. Sound meant identity.

The Toshiba RT-8890 Bombeat 16 is not a nostalgic relic. It embodies technological sovereignty and reliability—an instrument of public music culture, captured as a precise singular artifact of urban pop history.

First Release: January 2026

Photography: Alfred Steffen

Location / Year: Hamburg, studio photograph, September 2009

Body of Work: Zeitgeist

Edition, Format & Edition Size

Available Sizes and Editions

(The edition size applies per motif and size, regardless of the chosen presentation.)

45 × 30 cm (17.7 × 11.8 in)

Edition: 100 copies + 5 A.P.

75 × 50 cm (29.5 × 19.7 in)

Edition: 50 copies + 3 A.P.

105 × 75 cm (41.3 × 29.5 in)

Edition: 50 copies + 3 A.P.

(Identical for all presentation options.)

1) Only Print – Fine Art Print

Archival pigment print on Hahnemühle FineArt Baryta

1 cm white border

Unframed

2) ArtBox – white aluminium

Fine art print on Hahnemühle FineArt Baryta

Mounted behind 2 mm acrylic glass

Aluminium ArtBox, profile depth 50 mm (white)

3) Passepartout Frame – white (museum glass)

Fine art print on Hahnemühle Photo Rag Baryta

1 cm white border, passepartout

White wooden frame

Glazing: museum glass