Vaporwave is an art genre influenced by feelings of nostalgia, as well as popular and recognizable visuals.
It is a marginal art form that mostly uses symmetrical collages with synthesizing music. Those artworks seem to follow a certain pattern that shows reoccurring elements or colours, which can be found in typical Vaporwave Artworks. Topics like retro technology from the 90s and the feeling of nostalgia characterize the style.
moodboard #vaporwave #aesthetic #2010 #win95 #retro #lofi #neon #glitch
But can you break down these concepts and deduce simple rules to digitally generate an artwork for this genre? Will these collages still be “aesthetic”, as Vaporwave artworks are commonly referred to by their fans? In the course "1-bit" with Ralf Baecker we had to work with restrictions – this time with 1-bit. Therefore I thought about an art generator that uses a button input (0-1) to create a new artwork with specific elements and changing variables.
I experimented with Unity and established a connection from hardware (Arduino) to my software. The Arduino is supposed to read the button inputs, which then are translated into actions to generate a collage in a game.
While it was interesting to learn whether I am able to come up with simple rules to create an aesthetically pleasing artwork, I found that art is way more complicated than that.
And wtf is aesthetic anyway?
Skills I used / What I did
Unity 3D | C# | Arduino