OUGD505 - Studio Brief 01 - Uncertainmedia

As part of my research into the micro-genre of vaporwave, it was decided to use Tom Joyes' website http://uncertainmedia.com/ as a search engine to see what this specially made website picks out to define the music. Much of the imagery shows the typical characteristics of the vaporwave aesthetic in its depictions of neo-classical objects, skylines, and video games.

The website works like a search engine, bringing up eight different results based on the searched keyword. This media mainly consists of videos and moving imagery, with all eight videos being played at once before being able to mute them individually. This concept in itself could potentially represent the ideas of vaporwave in that living in the digital age means we are often presented with an overload of information, with too many voices and messages to be absorbed at once.

Muting the videos brings a layer of black stripes over the muted videos. It was thought that this gave the previews a hazy effect which slightly distorts the imagery underneath, which could also represent the ideas vaporwave presents in distorting reality and clouding the large amounts of information coming at us at once.

When searching for vaporwave music, a lot of the same imagery appeared, such as the Greco-Roman statue head and retro video games. Such imagery has been found present in vaporwave album cover art.

When searching for vaporwave type, imagery shows a theme of Japanese and Asian typography and symbols, which are often used against hypnagogic backgrounds. It has been argued that vaporwave's focus on various cultures reveals it to be a global aesthetics, something which has been developed by artists all over the world who connect through these more digital means of production and communication to share their ideas. The large use of Japanese typography and iconography is also said to reflect the aesthetics of utopian-like cities and the Japanese consumer culture and their economic transformation in the mid-90's.