Vaporwave honestly makes a lot of sense as an art, and I truly love it as a movement, but the fact that people view it as a joke it was really kills it. It plays into the whole idea that people do things ironically only because it means they dont have to own up for what they did. Vaporwave is silly on the outside, you talk to most people who enjoy Vaporwave and theres a good chance that theyll tell you theyre doing it ironically.But what if it wasnt? What if Vaporwave was looked at genuinely and seriously as if it were any other art movement? Vaporwave plays heavily on the idea of a post-modern future thats heavily run by corporatism, commercialism, and consumerism. Getting into the art I think its brilliant they way they use sampling. Vaporwave is Musique Concrete only accessible for the masses. If you ever listened to a Musique Concrete piece, chances are that you hated it. Music Concrete played very heavily on sampling, distorting samples, and repeating samples that would eventually just become noise over time, they would also make their own noise synthetically. Musique Concrete also relied on magnetic tape loops to play noise over and over again, a process thats now as simple as selecting a piece of a track copying and pasting it. Vaporwave utilizes all these aspects of Musique Concrete but then makes it easy to listen to, instead of the harsh arhythmatic meterless music, Vaporwave is nice and gentle and using samples to create Walls of Sound. Vaporwave combines New Age music and Musique Concrete to create a voluptuous soundscape reminiscent of the 90s. Vaporwave as a visual aesthetic takes a lot of inspiration from Dadaism. Much like its musical counterpart it too relies heavily on collage. It puts a juxtaposition of Renaissance sculptures with 90s web design and outmoded computer renderings. These sculptures, are seen as very aesthetically pleasing, as for the computer renderings not so much. Having these together goes to show where we came from, and where we now are. We came from a place of class, of beauty, and where are we now? Windows 98 Teal background with 16 bit rendered start buttons. These only further the point of consumerism, pushing the idea that this is what you get (Greek Bust) but this is what you have (Windows 98). Another motif used in Vaporwave art is Japanese text. This text usually has no meaning in a given image, the only reason its there is just for the aesthetically pleasantness of it. This is a representation of language in itself. We go to a store to buy something, we see letters printed on the box, it doesnt matter what it says were going to buy it anyway. We understand that its a language but we dont understand what it means, and thats the point Vaporwave is trying to bring out. If this was taken as a serious art form I think that it could go down in the history books. Both Dadaism and Musique Concrete havent been relevant for a long time. Of course historians and art enthusiants can tell you modern pieces that have been inspired by the two, but there hasnt been whole art movements inspired by both ever before. It doesnt really matter whether or not Vaporwave is recognized as a movement, im happy I got to be a part of it and watch it grow, and I hope that one day it grows past the point of being a joke and it sprouts into an Art Movement.
Posted on: Mon, 20 Oct 2014 06:57:53 +0000
Recently Viewed Topics
© 2015