User:Pleun/grad/thesisoutline3

TITLE

Vaporwave as a 21st century minor literature
The postmodern minor literature of Vaporwave

Chapters

Explaining the void
Minor Literature
Hypernormalisation

Bits and pieces

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 theorized Vaporwave would have a similar faith, so much so that “Vaporwave is dead” itself became a meme. In 2017, however, its 'abandoned shopping mall' aesthetic is still very much around and is still gaining popularity.

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!

Another example is the relatively new, but already completely evolved online subculture, visual language and musical genre of Vaporwave. Born in 2010, 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. At the end of 2016 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 all on an old Windows '95 monitor in the Japanese city Kyoto. You can only see the criticism in second glance – beyond the flashy images and the elevator-music.

Literature and texts

Vaporwave

Articles:

Books:

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

Music:

Macintosh Plus (one of the most influentialalbums)
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