User:Pleun/grad/thesis

Working Title

Exploring the micro internetculture Vaporwave as a Minor Literature.

Main Question

How can Vaporwave manifest as a 21st century Minor Literature without causing its death?

Outline

Abstract
Introduction

Welcome to the void: the analogy of the bombastic void.
Minor Literature (In defence of the poor image): Is the (visual) language of vaporwave sharpening or flattening?
The allegory of Pepe the frog and the sadboy: The soundtrack of the Alt-Right (fashwave): What is the relation between Vaporwave and the Alt-Right?

Conclusion
From Kyoto to Mount Fiji (The Vaporwave Atlas): An in depth analysis of the Vaporwave image culture.

Abstract

Born in 2010, the micro internet subculture Vaporwave began as an “ironic critique of global capitalism in the form of sample based informercials and home shopping networks” (Urban Dictionary) that used the empty promises of capitalism as a critique by heavily overusing brand A E S T H E T I C in combination with glitch, fluor, Greek and Roman architecture and sculpture and early nineties web nostalgia. The subculture later completely transformed into the subject of its own critique and was declared dead when MTV and Tumblr started to incorporate it in 2015. In 2017 it is definitely not dead, it is actually more popular than ever, but it's intentions are unclear. The most interesting thing about Vaporwave is that its constantly contradicting itself. You could say doublethink (a term coined by Orwell in his 1984 novel) is based at the core of the movement. The subculture is nostalgic but futuristic, criticising but adoring capitalism, idealising zoning-out with its endless GIF-loops, but clashing that with heavy aesthetic.

Vaporwave creates it's own hyperreality where you enter a world of pastel perfect plastic, LED lit statues and cyan-blue waterfalls seen on an old monitor with Windows '95 in the Japanese city of Kyoto. You can only see the criticism in second glance – beyond the flashy images and the post-apocalyptic mall music.

In this thesis I will be looking at a few aspects of Vaporwave that are most pressing. Firstly, how doublethink in Vaporwave causes bombastic chaos and voidness to co-exist, secondly, is the Minor Literature of vaporwave sharpening or flattening?, and third, What is Vaporwaves (Fashwave) relation to alt-right politics?

Introduction

At the start of this decennium in the midst of global capitalism and an endless datastream a new subculture emerged from the depths Seapunk had just drowned in: Vaporwave, or better stylized: v a p o r w a v e. Seapunk itself was a short-lived and heavily aestheticized electronic musical genre revolving around aquatic-themed 3D renders and nineties nostalgia. It was the first internet-born musical subculture to break out into mainstream media. Its height in popularity simultaneously meant its death when in one week a new music video for the song 'Atlantis' of pop and rap princess Azealia Banks came out and Rihanna gave a performance on SNL, both with aesthetics heavily influenced by Seapunk. Azealia and Rihanna weren't meant to ride dolphins on a cyan glittery ocean any more than any other well established face of musical capitalism was. The subculture wasn't meant to go mainstream, so when it did it immediately fizzled out.

It was commonly theorised Vaporwave would have a similar faith, so much so that “Vaporwave is dead” itself became a meme. The prophesy was thought to be fulfilled when it was declared dead in 2015 when MTV and Tumblr started to incorporate it in their visual identity. In 2017, however, its 'post-apocalyptic mall' aesthetic is still very much around and is still gaining popularity. Where Seapunk failed to survive its own succes, Vaporwave seems to have a little bit more to say.

CHAPTER 1: Welcome to the void

The analogy of a bombastic void.

フローラルの専門店

The tiles on the floor are a hard pastel pink checkered with black. The mere sight of it tells me I must be close. I am wandering through big empty neon lit halls searching for the floral shoppe. The walls are painted with the same pastel pink as the big squares on the floor. In the distance I see a cityscape through a window. Or maybe it is just a painting on the wall. With the appearance of Helios’ bust on my left I know I have arrived. But something alienates me. It is the bust. It has no face.

"See, its a crazy world we're living in" sings Jamiroquai in his song Virtual Insanity in 2009 about the seemingly endless virtual world we wander and get lost in. In the chorus of the song he argues that we are governed by our love for twisting the intended use of new technology and therefore our futures are in hyperreality. Later in the song does a apocalyptic prediction that this has got to change before "No more will we be".

Futures made of that virtual insanity now,
Always seem to, be governed by our love,
For useless, twisting, of that new technology"

Thirty years earlier in the text Simulacra and Simulation (1981), Jean Baudrillard argues symbols and signs replaced reality to the point we can't distinguish the real from simulation anymore. These simulacra are no copies of reality, but are real in their own right. They construct perceived reality, while preceding reality. The hyperreal has no connection with the real, nor does it try to hide it.

Hypernormalisation: The tendency of our modern western society of trying to escape from instead of dealing with the complexities of this world, while keeping up appearances of a fully functioning society.

In this chapter I am going to describe hyperreality, and how we got from indulging in it to trying to escape from it again. Doublethink

CHAPTER 2: The Post-Apocalyptic Shopping Mall

MAIN QUESTION: Is the (visual) language of vaporwave sharpening or flattening?

"The poor image is an illicit fifth-generation bastard of an original image. Its genealogy is dubious. Its filenames are deliberately misspelled. " – Journal #10 - Hito Steyerl - In Defense of the Poor Image, http://www.e-flux.com/journal/10/61362/in-defense-of-the-poor-image/

In this chapter I will look at the visual language of vaporwave as a visual culture. I want to analyse a few returning icons to see how they express what I perceive as "what vaporwave wants to communicate", which is a wish to escape this hyperreal world and a heavy nostalgia

The Icons I want to address are: The Roman Statue

CHAPTER 3: The allegory of Pepe the frog and the sadboy

MAIN QUESTION: The soundtrack of the Alt-Right (fashwave): What is the relation between Vaporwave and the Alt-Right?

"Dozens of Vaporwave artists gathered in Montreal over the weekend to discuss the genres growing Nazi problem." DJ Karoda Nite agrees. “I love making music, but if neo nazis keep using my tracks in their propaganda videos, I might have to stop releasing more albums,” says Karoda. “I don’t want to help enable their hatred. Music should be about bringing people together, not about establishing a 4th Reich under God Emperor Trump, lord of the Americas, or whatever the fuck it is that fascists are trying to do.” – Ravenews, 09/02/17, http://www.ravenews.ca/en/read/2016/february/09/

In this chapter I am going to analyse the Sadboy (a known identity in meme-culture). I think the sadboy is a strong link in internetculture between subcultures like vaporwave, meme-culture and the alt-right. The sadboy could be described as a typical privileged white teenage boy living in the basement of his parents house, strolling on the internet, finding platforms like 4chan and 8chan to bitch about him having a terrible life without friends or a girlfriend. These teens are highly active on these forums and within game culture. They spend more hours a day in hyperreality than the actual world outside. Radicalised versions of the sadboy dominate the alt-right at the moment. A sad version of alt-right icon Pepe the frog is much used to identify a sadboy. Rapper Yung Lean – a cloud-rapper (cloud rap is a sub-genre of vaporwave) – started using the term sadboys to describe him and his fellow rappers within the same genre. The name is gaining popularity fast. Sadboys are not directly linked to alt-righters that much yet, but I believe they very much describe the same type. To me the sadboy is the link between two worlds that I believe are going to collide soon. This is proven already by the new subculture within vaporwave which is called "Fashwave", an alt-right version of vaporwave with aesthetics and lyrics that very much combine the two.

The Icons I want to address are:

The Sadboy aangevuld met een aantal icons binnen vaporwave die binnen de "sadboy aesthetic" vallen.
Pepe the Frog aangevuld met icons en taalgebruik van de alt-right
Fashwave

Conclusion

From Kyoto to Mount Fiji

The Vaporwave Atlas

An in depth analysis of the Vaporwave image culture.

(I want to specify which elements are central to a Vaporwave image, and then with a few of them trace back where they come from and why they keep popping up)

The Empty Shopping Mall

The Window's '95 logo

The Fiji Water Bottle

The Arizona Iced tea

The Japanese character / Kanji

The Elevator

The Palmtree

The Pyramid

The Road

The CD

The City Scape

The Sea

The Desert

The VHS Tape

The Manga Character

The 3D Render

The Pastel

The Dolphin

The Skeleton

The City Kyoto

The Grid

The Girl A blond girl in pastel stares beside the camera while repeating the same sentence for three minutes. Her features seem perfect, her voice soft, her posture still. Everything about her is plastic and meaningless. It's the perfect illustration of a lack of depth we find in the quick satisfaction of consumer culture, a consumerist void.

The Bubble The soft motions of a shiny globe gliding through the air, reflecting light on a thin fluorescent film. Beautiful in t it's completely empty inside.

(ALMOST NO HUMANS: post-human world?)

Bits and pieces

Sara:

Capitalism, look at critiques of capitalism. Marx for instance.

Manifesto is in the images themselves
Constellation of images

15 februari: re-submit
outline, 5 key texts, first chapter draft, second chapter start

The first computer my family bought was set up at a central desk in the living room for everyone to see and to use. An odd bulky thing which took forever to finally show the iconic Windows '95 logo. It went on to make the monotone sounds of a dial-up modem we all nostalgically look back to today, so we could open up Internet Explorer to visit the Dutch predecessor of Google: startpagina.nl and from there surf into cyber space.

What makes Vaporwave stick better than its predecessors? Welcome to the void!

Literature

Vaporwave

Articles:

INSPIRATION AND RELATED TEXTS:

Hito Steyerl – In defense of the poor image, e-flux
Sontag – Notes On Camp, 1964
El Lissitzky – storia di due quadrati (deprivation and propaganda)

Iconology

Oulipo

Fashwave:

Books:

Babbling Corpse, Vaporwave and the Commodification of Ghosts - Grafton Tanner (PDF)
Retromania: Pop Culture's Addiction to its Own Past - Simon Reynolds (PDF)
Kafka - Towards a Minor Literature

Music:

Macintosh Plus (one of the most influential albums)
Yung Lean
Blank Banshee
death's dynamic shroud.wmv
Saint Pepsi
マクロスMACROSS 82-99
Internet Club
Oneohtrix Point Never
James Ferraro

Video:

Vaporwave Fashion