"Vaporwave isn’t just something you listen to either, it’s something you experience, and experiences include visuals. Vaporwave visual art, simply referred to as 'aesthetics,' is varied but tends to honor some core tenets. If you’re looking at something pink and teal with a marble classical bust and a glitchy Windows 95 logo, you’re probably looking at a vaporwave aesthetic. If you’re watching a YouTube video with a title written in a weirdly soothing stretched out font, you’re probably watching a vaporwave aesthetic.
If you haven’t guessed by now, vaporwave is a bit of a joke, or more accurately, an internet meme. Vaporwave’s trippy immediate artistic ancestor 'seapunk' was a running inside joke on Tumblr during 2011 about fashion and art and music inspired by the ocean. The look and sound of a psychedelic club run by a hipster Ariel from The Little Mermaid is a pretty accurate summation. Neon seapunk imagery even found its way into Rihanna’s 2012 Saturday Night Live performance, confounding many viewers with its colorful and stylish but garish, cheap, and seemingly unprofessional grainy green screen look. The exact difference between seapunk and vaporwave is blurry, but as far as I understand vaporwave trades the aquatic focus for a fascination with the emptiness of aging and/or amateur glossy commercialism. It’s the music playing behind an infomercial for public access purgatory."
(Jordan Minor, 03 June 2016)
Vidding is a fan-made music video genre using appropriated content [4207]
Moritz Stefaner speaking about his work on the Selfiecity.net project (part 2) at the 'Visualized' conference in New York, 6-7 February 2014.
"Tactical Media emerged when the modest goals of media artists and media activists were transformed into a movement that challenged everyone to produce their own media in support of their own political struggles. This "new media" activism was based on the insight that the long-held distinction between the 'street' (reality) and the 'media' (representation) could no longer be upheld. On the contrary, the media had come to infuse all of society.
To challenge dominant (strategic) structures in society, it was necessary develop new (tactical) means of producing and distributing media. Not a specialised task separate from the social movements, but a key activity around which social movements could coalesce. And of equal importance, the media environment characterised by a broadcast logic of geography was being supplemented with an environment characterised by a many-to-many logic of access.
Though much has changed these insights remain as valid today as they did in the early 1990s."
(Eric Kluitenberg and David Garcia)
Fig.1 Image from: Critical Art Ensemble, Digital Resistance: Explorations in Tactical Media, 2001. http://critical-art.net/books/digital
"This is the third lecture in a series titled 'Digital Natives,' referring to the generation that has been raised with the computer as a natural part of their lives, especially the young people who are currently in schools and colleges today. The series seeks to understand the practices and culture of the digital natives, the cultural implications of their phenomenon and the implications for education to schools, universities and libraries.
According to Wesch, it took tens of thousands of years for writing to emerge after humans spoke their first words. It took thousands more before the printing press appeared and a few hundred again before the telegraph did. Today a new medium of communication emerges every time somebody creates a new web application. 'A Flickr here, a Twitter there, and a new way of relating to others emerges,' Wesch said. 'New types of conversation, argumentation and collaborations are realized.'
Enter YouTube, which is not just a technology. 'It's a social space built around video communication that is searchable, taggable and mashable,' Wesch said. 'It is a space where identities, values and ideas are produced, reproduced, challenged and negotiated in new ways.'"
(Library of Congress, 22 May 2008)
Fig.1 Michael Wesch, 23 June 2008, Library of Congress [http://mediatedcultures.net/]
"Helina is explaining what a haul girl is to me. 'Basically, you go out shopping for clothes or beauty products,' she says, 'then you make a haul video and show viewers on YouTube what you got. You go through the items of clothing one by one. I guess what people get out of them is not showing off, like, how much money you've got or anything, but lifestyle: you get to see how one person lives, what their taste is.'
If you're minded to sneer at a youth cult that involves making videos about your shopping, then Helina has a pretty intriguing counter–argument. 'It's not just about showing what you've got,' she says. 'It's a whole creative process behind the videos as well, which is what I enjoy about it. Choosing the right music, going from the filming to the editing. Sometimes I even storyboard things, because I want certain shots, how I can present different items and things like that.' Besides, she says, it's a genuine community. She thinks a lot of haul girls 'turn the camera on because it's a way to talk to people without having to go outside and face their fears. I know that was the case with me: I turned on my camera because I was at home, signed off work, sick, and really bored. And it helped with my confidence in a way. There's this community where you can talk to like–minded people.'"
(Alexis Petridis, 20 March 2014, The Guardian)
"Over the past 8 years, YouTube has given birth to an increasingly sophisticated entertainment culture that operates outside of the traditional television and film ecosystem. With humble roots in charismatic and creative people simply sharing their lives, thoughts, and humor to their webcams, YouTube entertainment has diversified and grown into tens of thousands of unique channels with millions of loyal fans and subscribers. With a new generation of viewers increasingly turning to YouTube instead of broadcast TV, a new industry is being built around personalities who have dissolved the barriers between on–screen talent and the audience, and who employ visual aesthetics that make the viewer feel as if they are a part of the creator's life. Truly, we are in a new era of entertainment, one being led by millions of young people who are equally happy to watch video on their laptop as they are on their TV."
"Photoshop has completely revolutionized our visual culture. Artists now use Photoshop to create complex imagery that would have been impossible 20 years ago. It has also profoundly changed the art of photo retouching, turning a labor intensive process into an artful and often controversial digital workflow. But possibly the most current and expressive influence can be seen in meme culture online. With the ability to alter any image in the media landscape, everyday people now have the means to critically comment on culture and spread their ideas virally, leveling the playing field between traditional media creators and consumers. Photoshop has changed the way we communicate, the way we express ourselves, and the way we view the world and each other."
Exhibition: 'Cut Up'; 29 June–14 October 2013; In the Amphitheater Gallery; Organized by Jason Eppink, Associate Curator of Digital Media at The Museum of the Moving Image.
"From supercuts to mashups to remixes, Cut Up celebrates the practice of re-editing popular media to create new work, presenting contemporary videos by self-taught editors and emerging artists alongside landmarks of historic and genre-defining reappropriation.
Easy access to editing tools and distribution platforms now gives more people than ever before the opportunity to respond to the commercial products that shape our cultural dialogues. By plumbing a vast shared vocabulary of image and sound, audiences can express affiliation, criticize, or construct entirely new content using popular media as raw material. Re-edited videos are created and shared online daily by publics that spend increasing amounts of social time in front of networked screens. As the distinction between consumer and participant becomes ever more fluid, re-editing popular media has emerged as a common way of participating in a shared cultural conversation.
The exhibition presents a selection of short-form video works that take movies, music videos, television series, and news broadcasts as their source material, focusing on genres and techniques that have emerged online over the past decade and their on- and offline precedents."
"The digital revolution of the last decade has unleashed creativity and talent of people in an unprecedented way, unleashing unlimited creative opportunities.
But does democratized culture mean better art, film, music and literature or is true talent instead flooded and drowned in the vast digital ocean of mass culture? Is it cultural democracy or mediocrity?
This is the question addressed by PressPausePlay, a documentary film containing interviews with some of the world's most influential creators of the digital era."
(House of Radon)
Fig.1 "PressPausePlay" (2011) [http://www.houseofradon.com/]
"The term covers (and promises) a lot, and a quick Google search fills in quite a bit of the territory. One enthusiast snagged the domain name, but there are plenty of others in the game.
One site notes that vernacular photography is '...one of the most affordable areas of collecting and therefore offers wonderful opportunities for the beginner to acquire beautiful examples of photographic art at very reasonable prices.' gargantuaphotos.com poses the basic question: 'Why would I buy someone else's crappy old photos?', and thefoundphoto.com is another gallery/vendor.
Boston University hosted Vernacular Reframed, 'a two–day interdisciplinary conference examining issues in vernacular photography' in November 2004, but lots of enthusiasts are in the game as well: Square America, bighappyfunhouse.com, and Junior Bonner blogs about the phenomenon. Some specialize in specific genres, like photobooth and African American Vernacular Photography. Ookpik specializes in Michigan photographs, happy palace has an eclectic (and ever–growing) mix, greywater posts 'photographs from films I processed that I found in old cameras...', and eBay has a Vernacular Photography Enthusiasts group with more than 100 members.
Serious scholarship is not far behind: Electronic Journal of Vernacular Photography may be stillborn, but Innocence regained? Or just another kind of fiction? from eye magazine suggests that there are many who take the medium seriously. One is Geoffrey Batchen who taught a course at CUNY's Graduate Center (there's a video of a lecture he gave at Brown)
Quite a few museums have had vernacular photography shows, including Kodak and the Rise of Amateur Photography at New York's Metropolitan Museum, and this grant proposal from the Indiana University Archives Seeing the Color of America: Digitizing the Charles Cushman Collection is evidence of archival interest in the medium.
My friend Joan Larcom reminds me of one of the authorities who has done the most in this realm, Michael Lesy, and his coinage of the term demotic photography, which I find a good supplement to 'vernacular'. A New York Times story notes that:
'In the past, Mr. Lesy has ruffled some academic feathers by arguing that what he calls 'demotic photography,' like family snapshots or picture postcards, deserves the same level of scholarly study traditionally given only to art photography... 'my whole intention is to subvert the [art photography] canon... There are possibilities that go beyond the safe definitions of what an artist is and what the camera is used for. ...Academics... deal with photographs as aesthetic, intellectual constructs, or as integers in philosophical or linguistic argument. That's not all they are. They're slippery and deeply emotionally charged. A photograph is a thing which, to use an old scholarly word, needs to be 'unpacked.' There's the manifest content, then half a dozen layered contents.'
(NYT 17 Dec 2005 sec B pg 9)"
(Hugh Blackmer, oook.info)
"9–year–old Caine Monroy spent his summer vacation building an elaborate cardboard arcade inside his dad's used auto parts store. The entire summer went by, and Caine had yet to have a single customer. Then, on the last day of summer, a filmmaker named Nirvan stopped to buy a door handle for his car. Caine asked Nirvan to play, and Nirvan bought a $2 FunPass, becoming Caine's first customer. Inspired by Caine's creativity, Nirvan came back to make a short film about Caine's Arcade and organized a flashmob to surprise Caine with lots of customers."
"Star Wars Uncut is the brainchild of Casey Pugh, a developer dedicated to creating new and fun experiences on the web.
In 2009, Casey became interested in using the internet as a tool for crowdsourcing user content.
Star Wars was a natural choice to explore the dynamics of community creation on the web – the response from fans has been overwhelming worldwide and the resulting movie is incredibly fun to watch."
(Casey Pugh)
"the Tokyo–based Web Technology Com Corp. held a press conference for their new software 「コミPo!」(AKA ComiPo!). This 'manga sequencer' – the first of it's kind for the PC – allows users to create their own Japanese comics with all the trimmings: character models, big eyes, facial expressions, panel layouts, dialogue, sound effects, speed lines, the works."
(Patrick Macias, 16 October 2010)
"The goal of this study is to construct a series of ethnographic case studies of the activities of English–language fandoms of Japan–origin media, particularly anime (animation) and related media such as electronic games, trading cards, and manga (comics). Building on Ito's prior research on children's engagement with new media in Tokyo, this study adds a transnational dimension, focusing on how English–language fans translate, subtitle, share, and remix Japan–origin media. The project aims for a broad ethnographic description of the diverse range of fan activities that comprise anime fandom, focused on the US and English–language online sites. These sites and activities include anime clubs, anime and game conventions, fan subtitling groups, online 'shrine' sites dedicated to particular characters or series, anime news and discussion sites, file sharing sites, internet relay chat, anime music videos, fan art, and fan fiction.
Anime fandoms and transnational otaku groups represent a unique case study in youth activism and remix cultures, providing examples of creativity and social mobilization as ignited by passion for particular forms of cult media. Anime fans have constructed a grass roots movement to make Japan–origin media available to an English–speaking public. Further, they construct derivative works of fan art, video, and fiction that represent emergent forms of communication and creativity keyed to the digital age. These networks of amateur cultural production exhibit unique forms of learning, sharing, and reputation systems that can inform our understanding of how digital media can facilitate lateral and peer–to–peer knowledge communities."
(Mimi Ito, Brendan Callum, Renee Saito, Annie Manion, Rachel Cody, Ryan Shaw, Jennifer Urban)
[Illustration created by 'usagijen' of 'DNAngel Riku' published by scrumptious.animeblogger.net]
"Remember Apple's ad campaign during the heyday of Napster? It was 'Rip, Mix, Burn.' (video) The message was clear ? clip and mix your music your way. After all, it is your music. You bought it. Unfortunately, Apple ran into a bit of hot water over the campaign because the music industry (e.g. the content creators) felt it encouraged CD ripping and file sharing. Today a similar controversy is bubbling, sparked by the Google Toolbar's new Autolink feature. It inserts links into online content that were not put there by the publisher. Now Time magazine is reporting that Marissa Mayer at Google says that the company will unlikely back down unless users demand it. Marissa, what are the bloggers, chop liver?
The question at heart is what right does a user have to change the content of a non–editable Web page they didn't create? Cory Doctorow says..
"It's my screen, and I should be able to control it; companies like Google and individuals should be able to provide tools and services to let me control it."
This made Robert Scoble so mad, he nearly crushed his Channel 9 Guy with his bare hands. Scoble wrote...
"This is such a slippery slope. Do you really want to go down this slope? If you allow Google to do this, you are opening a pandora's box that you'll never close."
I agree with Scoble. This is a pivotal discussion that bloggers, journalists, PR professionals and marketers need to jump into. Do you really want Google, Microsoft, George W. Bush, God or anyone adding links to your content? You know my position here. If I were you, I wouldn't want this ? unless the site is intentionally part of the read/write web, such as a wiki or a blog that is open to comments. Your content is your content. If you care about the Web, I urge you to sign this petition that I created and spread the word. We need to send a message to Google and others that messing with content is just plain wrong."
Steve Rubel (Senior Vice President, Edelman)