CARI The Contemporary Aesthetic Research Institute Unearthing the Forgotten Design History of the Recent Past
MISSION STATEMENT CARI is an online community dedicated to developing a taxonomy of recent design aesthetics in modern consumer culture, interpreting and critiquing them in the context of societal trends.
HOW THIS GOT STARTED
VAPORWAVE AND A BIT OF AN OBSESSION
VAPORWAVE Vaporwave is a microgenre of electronic music and an Internet meme that emerged in the early 2010s. The style is defined by its appropriation of 1980s and 1990s mood music styles such as smooth jazz, elevator music, R&B, and lounge music, typically sampling or manipulating tracks via chopped and screwed techniques and other effects. Its surrounding subculture is sometimes associated with an ambiguous or satirical take on consumer capitalism and popular culture, and tends to be characterized by a nostalgic or surrealist engagement with the popular entertainment, technology and advertising of previous decades.
HYPNOGOGIA & HAUNTOLOGY
LOST FUTURES, AND WHAT WERE WE MISSING BEYOND VAPORWAVE?
HAUNTOLOGY
“In the 2000s, the term was taken up by critics in reference to paradoxes found in postmodernity, particularly contemporary culture’s persistent recycling of retro aesthetics and incapacity to escape old social forms. Critics such as Mark Fisher and Simon Reynolds have used the term to describe art preoccupied with this temporal disjunction and defined by a “nostalgia for lost futures.”
HYPNAGOGIC POP
“Pop music refracted through the memory of a memory.” Cultural sources subconsciously remembered from a 1980s and early 1990s adolescence while freeing them from their historical contexts and “homing in on the futuristic signifiers” of the period.
DIVING INTO THE AESTHETICS
FACTORY POMO 1987 - 1994
GLOBAL VILLAGE COFFEEHOUSE 1988 - 1999
‘FRASURBANE’ 1990 - 2000
Y2K
1993-2003
GEN X Y/A CONTEMPORARY + SOFT CLUB 1992 - 2002
METALHEART 1998-2004
ZEN-X
1996-2002
MCBLING 2000-2008
FRUTIGER AERO 2004-2011
NEOLIBERAL VECTOR MINIMALISM 2010-2015
BOUGIE DESIGN 2015-PRESENT
ENGAGING COMMUNITIES IN DESIGN RESEARCH USING VARIOUS ONLINE PLATFORMS PLATFORM FACEBOOK TUMBLR
# OF USERS/FOLLOWERS ~18,000 (MULTIPLE GROUPS) ~35,000 FOLLOWERS
BEST TO USE FOR ACCESSIBLE RESEARCH, DISSECTING EXAMPLES, GROUP DISCUSSION HEAVILY-CURATED, FRONT FACING FEED OF RESULTS FROM RESEARCH, MUSEUM-LIKE
DISCORD
300 USERS
FREE DISCUSSION AND SHARING OF EXAMPLES, SMALL COMMUNITY
ARE.NA
75 USERS
BLOCK-BASED, INTENSIVE RESEARCH WITHIN A SMALL COMMUNITY
1000 FOLLOWERS
HEAVILY-CURATED, FRONT FACING FEED, BUT ALMOST PURELY VISUAL, LITTLE DISCUSSION
RESEARCH TECHNIQUES THE ARCHIVAL ‘BLACK HOLE’
IN THE TRANSITION TO A MAINLY DIGITAL SOCIETY, THERE HAS BEEN A PERIOD OF TURBULENCE IN THE WAY WE RECORD OUR MEDIA.
1980
MEDIA IS PRIMARILY PHYSICAL, AND RELIABLE AS A HISTORICAL SOURCE, THOUGH INACCESSIBLE TO MANY
2000
MEDIA IS BEING TRANSITIONED ONTO THE INTERNET, OFTEN IN LOW RESOLUTION OR OBSOLETE FORMATS
2020
WITH DATA STORAGE AND THE INTERNET MATURING, DIGITAL RECORDS ARE MORE ACCESSIBLE
RESEARCH TECHNIQUES
A HOLISTIC APPROACH TO AESTHETIC RESEARCH - PUBLICLY AVAILABLE PHYSICAL RECORDS (MAGAZINES, BOOKS, CD’S) - ARCHIVE.ORG (WAYBACK MACHINE) - ONLINE SCANNED ARCHIVES (GOOGLE, POPULAR SCIENCE, VOGUE, ETC.) - CONTACTING THE ORIGINAL DESIGNERS - AMAZON BOOKS - MACHINE LEARNING ALGORITHMS (REVERSE IMAGE SEARCH, FLICKR)
MEDIA COVERAGE
INTERVIEWS, ARTICLES, CONSUMER RESEARCH
INFLUENCE ON DESIGN WORK COLLABORATION, INSPIRATION
WHERE WE’RE HEADED
POTENTIAL VALUE FOR ARCHITECTURE, INTERIOR DESIGN ANALYZING REVIVAL MOVEMENTS, RECREATING LOST ATMOSPHERES
QUESTIONS?