Vaporwave Gets Academic Analysis
@kaoruww shared a Japanese article analyzing vaporwave's roots in retail apocalypse and digital nostalgia — 4 likes, 881 views. Meanwhile, @deserteagle291 argued that backrooms/liminal spaces are essentially vaporwave, capturing eerie vibes of abandoned happy places.
Vaporwave first emerged in the early 2010s, an internet-based microgenre of electronic music and visual art. It is characterized by a nostalgic and often surreal engagement with the popular culture, technology, and advertising of the 1980s and 1990s. The music often features slowed-down and distorted samples of smooth jazz, R&B, and lounge music. The name "vaporwave" itself is a play on "vaporware," a term for software that is announced but never released, reflecting the genre's critique of the unfulfilled promises of consumer capitalism. Artists in the genre often operate under pseudonyms and use imagery of 1990s web design, glitch art, anime, and Greco-Roman statues. Pioneers of the sound include producers like James Ferraro, Daniel Lopatin, and Ramona Xavier, who is also known as Vektroid. The "retail apocalypse" refers to the widespread closure of brick-and-mortar stores that began in the 2010s, largely due to the rise of e-commerce. This trend accelerated during the COVID-19 pandemic, leading to an increase in abandoned commercial spaces like shopping malls. These empty, once-bustling locations have contributed to the aesthetic of "liminal spaces." Liminal spaces are transitional or in-between places that can feel both familiar and unsettlingly empty, such as deserted hallways or vacant waiting rooms. The "backrooms" is a more specific, internet-born concept of an endless maze of empty, yellow-tinted office-like rooms. Both concepts evoke feelings of nostalgia, disorientation, and eerie familiarity, which align with the themes often explored in vaporwave.
