Soooo, what is Vapor Wave?
**The Digital Art Making Tutorial / Recording from class on 11/19 is at the bottom of this post – scroll down to follow along please**
Well, before we dig in, I blame professor Michael Smith for getting me hooked on the Aesthetic! Did I just say “aesthetic”? It all started when I saw that he created this post and assignment for a previous CT101 class that we were team teaching:
(PS – The assignment details are at the bottom of this post!)
#ds106 reply to me w/ tag #tdc1775 Create a Retro 80s Message! https://t.co/2lS2FCoJVo pic.twitter.com/r6ZpyMm1Fy
— ds106 Daily Create (@ds106dc) November 17, 2016
Prof. Smith went on to say:
“I saw this morning’s DS106 Daily Create and thought of the Vaporwave Aesthetic (read the wiki – it helps) and thought I’d share my interest in it. It’s an amalgam of retro culture remix focused on the commercial aesthetics of 1980s and early 1990s – VHS artifacts, Glitch art, a little greek classical sculpture, 90s web design, low poly 3D computer graphics, and more. It’s a fairly recent phenomena starting around 2010, but there’s already a brief history video if interested.”
I updated the video link to another variation as the original video from a few years ago was removed.. but if you go to YouTube and do a search for “VaporWave”, well, down the rabbit hole you will go!
Prof. Smith is also responsible for introducing me to the infamous but yet now very famous – KIDMOGRAPH – a motion graphics artist based in Argentina who continues to dominate the Motion Graphics world in many many ways! Including inspiring tons and tons of artists and designers of all types, all over the world.
“There’s a Tumblr by the handle KIDMOGRAPH that’s a personal favorite GIF artist in this particular genre. Here’s an example of his work which incorporates low polygon 3D models.”
KIDMOGRAPH is also on Instagram of course – here
Prof. Smith made a few cool examples below using some mobile and web applications, Ill also go a over a demonstration in our class! (Below)
“If you’d like to attempt to create vaporwave styled piece, consider using this – I like this Trianglify Generator to create low poly backgrounds or how about a low polygon generator from images. I made this remix from an NYPL Vulture archive image.”
“This I then took into a couple apps Ultrapop and Ultrapop Infinite to recolor and then to animate the images using ImgPlayPro all on the iPhone”
“There are a lot of other influences to consider in vaporwave such as 90s windows application interfaces and greek classical sculpture. Have a stab at this AE S THE TIC.”
We actually do a lot using https://photopea.com as an interface to make some digital art pieces, there are tons of transparent graphic assets out there on the web, ill share the process in class this week!
(Ryan’s photopea.com examples made in class – above)
Below – watch the video tutorials made in class
Passcode: *3cBkkh?
Passcode: vs=Zt1Pk
The ASSIGNMENT: In a new blog post, review this blog post and its content! Describe what you see and perceive, what is Vapor Wave? Do you love it? Hate it? Somewhere in between? Will you review the vaporwave aesthetic from a journalists perspective? Or will jump in as an artist and make some VAPORWAVE digital art? Will you do both? Either way, lets get to work and share this creative project on CT101 (and your personal websites if you wish! Be sure to check out the vaporwave student gallery here from CT101 students in the past!
This entry is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International license.
I see a lot of futuristic pictures and I think I like this, vaporwave is a mix of modern technology and art with old art to make something completely new. And I’m not crazy over it but, I can enjoy it. And I will make my vaporwave. On my website