Vaporwave

Vaporwave is an aesthetic that originated in the early 21st century as it came along with the surge of the electronic dance music industry. It consists of clashing 80’s/90’s retro with futuristic feels often using satirical images and glowing skylines. The color pallet is very distinct as it consists of neon pastels with pink and blue being the most common and in almost every piece of art there is something bright in the background (often a sun as seen above) focusing the audience’s attention. The retro feel comes from the early internet designs and glitching graphics in a lot of artwork. The futuristic nature of the aesthetic shines through with either modern machinery being present, or cap cut images pasted into the frame giving a mass media feel to the piece.

The image above illustrates one of the most common renditions of Vaporwave. With the illumination of the skyline mixing with pastel colors it clearly contrasts the dark mountains and horizon creating a soothing nature that comes out of the page. An example I think of that shows up in pop culture is Roku City (the idol state of the streaming service) which can also be said to be soothing as it is simply supposed to scroll in the background on unwatched TV’s. What this also emphasizes is the scale of the mark humans have left on Earth. Extending to the horizon, the city engulfs all you can see and extends into the sky. This brings up another interesting point about vaporwave, it attempts to make you look at space with curiosity, as a limit you can go beyond. This isn’t obvious above; however, this could explain the lone building towering over the city.

The image above has a more direct tone to make you look at space differently and does it in a much more retro way. It focuses on the urge to explore the universe and makes the audience feel small. The artist does this by filling the room from top to bottom with buttons and making the planets and stars cover the rest. The retro 8-bit feel comes from the analog control panels and extensive use of neon green. Again, there is a single bright spot in the image focusing the audience’s attention.

While vaporwave can be a soothing aesthetic like I said before, the above image shows that it can also be far from it. With the background being filled with retro characters and the foreground being a glitched image of the moon landing it gives an unsatisfying vibe. This isn’t the only example I came across either, a jumbled mess of stock images is common among vaporwave artists. Diving deeper into this design choice, I found out that a lot of artwork of this nature comes as a result of critiquing consumerism. I can only believe that’s what the artist above was thinking and possibly even thought that the moon landing was a pivotal point in consumerism and ever since then it’s been a “blur.”

Sources:

https://www.perfectcircuit.com/signal/vaporwave-history

https://indigomusic.com/feature/exploring-vaporwave-a-subgenre-and-cultural-phenomenon

Featured images:

Top image: https://wallpaperaccess.com/full/755385.jpg

Cityscape: https://wallpaperaccess.com/full/1112880.jpg

Spaceship: https://wallpaperaccess.com/full/1334905.jpg

Moon landing: https://wallpaperaccess.com/full/1112811.jpg