Vaporwave

macintoshplus_floralshoppe_cover

Artistic homage to the classical era of amazing & seemingly unending consumer technology advancement

So both 2019 and the decade are almost over – The first 20 years of this century. Looking back one can see the immense development of computers and software. Now people are nostalgically looking back at the early days with fondness. It was the classical age of computers. As soon as something new came out the old thing was of no interest and basically worthless. But now those old consoles and desktops are like ancient Hellenic statues of the gods, unearthed from the sands of time. You could look at it as the history of ancient electronic civilisation.

Nintendo, Sega, Amiga, Commodore 64, Atari, Apple, IBM, Windows 95, Donkey Kong, Mario, Sonic, Nokia, Compact Discs, GameBoy, Tetris, NES, Megadrive, Discman, Duckhunt, Double Dragon, Xerox. AND the internet. Altavista. 28, 36 and 56 kbps dial up modems, with their curious robot R2D2 like connection audio output. Also all these things were consumer products.

It was also an era where synthesiser music and VHS VCR ruled supreme but was fading out.

Vaporwave (My interpretation only) is a formula of a few key things. Palm trees, ancient Greek statues, early computer graphics, bright neon colours, Windows 95 applications such as Paint and often sunsets tropical beaches and Japanese writing. Also Fiji water. To me, clearly this formula points to the 1990’s onwards, in electronic consumer products and the kind of culture that grew up along side that.