Vaporwave

Vaporwave may look like a flashy, fun and vibrant aesthetic. But the adopters of this "wave" use their artwork to communicate a sarcastic commentary on the soullessness of modern consumer culture. Vaporwave, in essence, isn't "art for art's sake" but rather an intentionally vague artistic expression, using heavy glitches and color distortion to visual motifs we're all familiar with, in contrast to their dreariness in real life.

Computers, coke cans, web interface, video games and concrete skylines are all inanimate and dull. But we give so much meaning and color to them. Vaporwave brings this subjective experience into sensible graphics, inviting us to question the meaning of our own personal attachments to these common elements.

SHOP VAPORWAVE

vaporwave

Welcome to the void, there's nothing here.

Vaporwave, as an aesthetic and movement, has been described as a tongue-in-cheek commentary on modern consumerism and the soulless glamour of late capitalism.

Vaporwave, like many other aesthetics, gives you nostalgia. Even if you weren't around from the 1980s to early 2000s, both the images and music (mostly the music) send you to an era that once was.

Visuals

Popular visuals utilized in Vaporwave aesthetics can include, but are not limited, to Anime and cartoons, classical sculptures such as the Apollo Belvedere and Laocoon, consumerism (often displays brand names and logos, such as Adidas, Pepsi Cola, Microsoft Windows, Macintosh Plus, PlayStation, Arizona Iced Tea, and Fiji Water), computer hardware and graphics from the '80s-early '00s. Some other visual elements include city skylines, malls. These visuals are edited in a way to leave the viewer with a unique feeling of distress, often employed to emphasize the ironic soullessness of the Vaporwave aesthetic, in a 'sad but aesthetically pleasing' kind of way.

Liminal spaces (while on a creepier level, the surreal and nostalgic feeling goes quite well with this aesthetic), grids/lines/shapes (the inclusion of this in particular has led to some confusion with Synthwave aesthetics), pink and teal, altered reality (pictures with unnatural hues and tones can be seen throughout this aesthetic. Heavily edited pictures of the world around you can soon become unrecognizable and foreign), glitches, and the gratuitous use of Japanese, Korean and Chinese characters. Japanese seems to be one of the most used languages in the vaporwave community's artwork.

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