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V a p o r w a v e t h r e a d

No.6267316 View ViewReplyOriginalReport
previous thread: >>6228688

I'll be posting OC and taking vape requests.

What is vaporwave?
It is primary a genre of music that emerged around 2010, but it also has a very distinct visual aesthetic, which is the main focus of this thread.

Vaporwave is characterized by appropriation, imitation and recontextualization of pop culture artifacts from the 80's and 90's. It has associations with the period's retrofuturism and cyberpunk. Visually, it is related to pop art, collage, and digital (net, glitch, and pixel) art, but it is not limited to these. It tends to deconstruct already kitschy and/or banal source material, usually associated with mass production, such as elevator music, corporate music and art, infomercials, video games, early internet graphics, and television. The appropriation and imitation are done in a style that is deconstructive, recontextualizing the material and emphasizing artificial elements.

Recontextualization is done by using elements of the source material in ways other than their original intention, such as mimicking artifacts and other particularities distinct to a certain medium reproduction and using them in different ways from the source material or warping and distorting the source material.

Emphasizing the artificiality and "medium-ness" (coming from a television, radio, a memory, etc.) of the source material is a form of recontexualization and is almost always employed in Vaporwave. This is usually done by using graphic/video techniques such as VHS/tape distortion, a lo-fi aesthetic, glitch, surrealism, awkward copypasting and filtering.

Another common technique for deconstruction is emphasizing kitsch, creating caricaturial or hyper-real (or hyper-fake) versions of the source material, using simple repetitive structures and compositions.
These techniques, among others, give Vaporwave its distinct and crucial "meta" quality.

Vaporwave: A brief history:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PdpP0mXOlWM