The internet has done many, many things as far as changing us as society is concerned. One of these things is art. In a post-internet world, we are presented with an amount of art that we could have never been able to receive anytime before this. Sure, this means we will encounter a lot more art we wouldn’t normally seek to encounter that we hate but it also means the opposite: we are presented with art that we wouldn’t normally seek to encounter that we love.
All of these have caused a pretty interesting evolution of what we call “art”.
Before I get into all of this, let’s discuss high and low art – classically, “high art” is considered literature, theater, visual arts. “Low art” could be considered synonymous with the term pop culture; it’s music, film, anything the masses love. Such a distinction implies that they can never meet in the middle but I think this esoteric categorizing is much more fluid than any art historians might believe – they were never separate in the first place.
This essay is basically divided into two parts – Youtube Poop and Vaporwave.
I really don’t think Youtube Poop gets the credit it deserved, it was a big part of cementing the humor of a generation raised on the internet and the generations that would follow them. An important stepping stone on the trail that leads us to find nonsensical things like “I want fuit gummy” or “the poopie fall out my dam but” funny.
In ways, it’s an exploration of avant-garde humor and truly how far we can stretch “humor” and it still is funny. Although it all might not have aged greatly, it definitely redefined humor for a generation of people.
It’s best for you to just watch YTP to get the point rather than my attempt to explain it. From the editing techniques to the audio distortion, it popularized a type of avant-humor that had existed in one form or another for many years before it.
Just a few years before what is considered to be the first YTP, we have the comedy duo of Tim and Eric also creating utterly bizarre content. Tim and Eric Awesome Show, Great Job! was an incredibly important midnight snack stored on Adult Swim for this generation already exposed to YTP (or ones who were not, who just happened to be younger and watched Cartoon Network long enough until it turned into Adult Swim, finding some sort of small rebellion by reveling in the bizarre.)
We can look back further from the early 2000s and find what would influence – whether it was conscious or not – the style of YTP and the more bizarre meme selection we would see from the early 2000s onward. One of the best examples of this is the editing techniques used in Nobuhiko Obayashi’s 1977 film, House, also known as Hausu to distinguish it from that show about the doctor guy. Throughout the film, we are presented with choppy, fast-paced, and bizarre editing. Footage plays reverse and back forward repeatedly in quick swatches, chroma key is placed where chroma key wouldn’t normally be placed, cat sounds are edited to create entire songs.
If you’re unfamiliar with the story behind the story of the film, it was developed by Obayashi with the help of his daughter in order to create a world that can only be seen through the eyes of a child along with this he also drew from his own inspiration of losing all of his friends during the atomic bombing of Hiroshima.
When it was released, it was not to rave critic reviews, but the audiences loved it. It was a piece of popular culture that we now look back at as high art. Who decided it was high or low? Why has the meaning changed over time to some from being pure fun to being a commentary on post-World War II Japan when it was that all along? Why does art have to be old to be considered important?
Hausu is entry number 539 into the Criterion Collection. I’m sure if you told people in 1977 that this film would go on to be preserved because of its cultural meaning, they might not believe you. To me, these early forms of post-internet art are set for the same treatment. We cannot look at the internet’s creation without looking at the bizarre art that followed it.
Another thing the 2010s and post-internet age saw was the rise of was vaporwave, a genre of music focusing on samples of esoteric Japanese pop, elevator music, and computer tones of the 1990s, often slowed down and twisted to the point where they are barely recognizable and only seem familiar because of the nostalgia oozing off of them. Vaporwave wasn’t the first genre to utilize samples in this way, but I want to focus on the reason in which they used them.
Classic examples of the genre would of course be Macintosh Plus’s “Floral Shoppe”, Blank Banshee’s “Blank Banshee 0”, Chuck Person’s (now known as Oneohtrix Point Never) Eccojams Vol 1, and plenty of other albums that constantly show up in your Youtube recommendations.
Other work like James Ferraro’s 2011 album, “Far Side Virtual”, presents us with the faster-paced side of vaporwave, still heavy with samples from Skype, Windows, and other technology. This album feels like a chaotic version of the soundtrack to The Sims 2.
One of the big genre statements of vaporwave is a rebellion against consumerism by embracing and distorting the aesthetics of it – from elevator music to commercials or television news. For a second here, let’s discuss what I mean by “consumerist music”. One of the best examples of what I’m aiming at here is the soundtrack to The Sims (2000), particularly the tracks that play in buy mode; it’s music designed to (virtually) shop to.
Buy Mode 1, also known as Mall Rat, is catchy, fast, and is the MIDI adjacent version of what it feels like to browse furniture in a place with lights that are just a little too bright on your face and the tile is just a bit too squeaky when you walk.
Along with presenting this mash of music and samples that will never be cleared, the artists often present as anonymous beings; there is no face to the music unlike how pop has had to be for the last however many years. The ability of anonymity by hiding within the internet was just another way for vaporwave to challenge what musical artists and music have to be.
There’s a great quote from Grafton Tanner regarding vaporwave that sums up what I’m trying to say in a much more clear and concise way:
“Vaporwave is one artistic style that seeks to rearrange our relationship with electronic media by forcing us to recognize the unfamiliarity of ubiquitous technology ... vaporwave is the music of 'non-times' and 'non-places' because it is skeptical of what consumer culture has done to time and space”
Here we have the so-called clash between the high and low art qualities; it’s essentially pop music remodeled – something considered low art – to have the message of what could be considered high art. It’s been done through the years over and over with political music but I think the contrast when it comes to the contrast between the consumerist-tinged music and the anti-consumerist message.
Vaporwave was, of course, not the first to do this. One of my favorite examples of this is Broadcast and Stereolab creating a new form rebelling against society by embracing typical pop melodies and elevator-type beats into a genre that was straying as far away from this as possible. They both brought a crisp and consumer-mocking sound into a scene that was obsessed with low fidelity recordings that resent the establishment in a less satirical way.
“America’s Boy” by Broadcast off of their 2005 album, “Tender Buttons” is probably the peak example of this, not just sonically but lyrically. It’s a commentary on the Iraq War that is basically set to what most people would identify as “Overdriven Elevator Music”. The drumbeat is simple and played on a machine, synths with almost ringtone-like quality ring out over the beat in repeating patterns.
Quaker toil and Texan oil
Rockets on, we’re arm in arm
NASA nude, you’re manly, youOi, American Soldier
America’s boy
American Soldier
America’s boyGun me down with Yankee power
Cockpit Tom with army charm
The eagle land’s, army commands
Cowboy corn and bugle horn
The lyrics reign out over this loop that at times even sounds like a broken fax machine, a motif throughout the album.
Let’s also take a quick look at William Basinski’s Disintegration Loops. Basinski created these as a response to watching the events of 9/11 from his New York City rooftop. They are simple, looping synthesizer pieces where minimalism speaks more than any advanced composition would. The wordless composition isn’t what one would expect as a reactive piece of art. Like Broadcast, Stereolab, or vaporwave, it reacts by not reacting much which is something that has been proven to be incredibly powerful.
Overtime, vaporwave and its aesthetics became pop itself. On a smaller scale, you can look at the discography of an artist I love, George Clanton. From ESPIRIT 空想 to “100% Electronica” to “Slide”, more and more pop elements were introduced while still keeping the vaporwave aesthetic and production style. A genre has to evolve over time and Clanton did a great job carrying it over through his career.
Vaporwave aesthetics and production were also adapted into the early production of artists like Yung Lean and Bladee which later evolved into their own thing entirely.
Or even look at a return to 80s sound aesthetics in modern pop such as Paramore’s “After Laughter” and Carly Rae Jepsen’s “Emotion”, both some of the best recent pop albums.
Whether you want to call this a response or not, the original vaporwave artists evolved once again. A great example of this is the Christtt album, “Deep Dark Trench”. The samples are just incredible in amount and use on this record. One of my favorite tracks is “World Peace”, which is basically just a distorted mashup of Carly Rae Jepsen’s “Run Away With Me” and Miley Cyrus’s “Party in the USA”.
Although some moved in other directions, artists like Death’s Dynamic Shroud and “猫 シ Corp. are still producing great music influenced by the early vaporwave scene.
Pop is getting weirder and weirder which is something I am loving. The rise of PC Music bringing more experimental electronics into pop with producers such as SOPHIE, Arca, and A.G. Cook producing for acts such as Charli XCX, Kanye West, and Caroline Polachek has allowed for more artists not being held back from more experimental places; Everything can only get stranger from here.
“Send it Up” by Kanye West, prod. Arca
I think we’ll see more of the clash of pop culture and high art in the way that pop culture will now be realized as just as important as paintings, sculptures, etc. – it’s all just a reflection of the time it was created, no matter the medium it contains some weight of importance with its existence, no matter how small some might think it to be.
Now I’m not a cultural critic or historian no matter how hard I try to pretend to be, so take this all with a grain of whatever salt you’d like to – I am simply connecting things I know about because I think it’s interesting but I think there is a lot more value to the art that we might have written off as “memes” or jokes.
High and Low Art in the Post-Internet Age
Hi Kaylee, would you like to go out on a date sometime