Vaporwave is an internet art movement and music genre that emerged in the early 2010s. It creates a unique aesthetic experience that is both nostalgic and alienating, both intoxicating and critical, through parodying, sampling, and reconstructing 80s and 90s commercial culture, technological products, and casual music.

Visual Characteristics 

1. Color Palette

• Dominant Colors: Pink, Bright Cyan, Purple
• Accompanying Colors: Off-White, Black, Fluorescent Green
• Characteristics: High saturation but with a faded feel, like an old magazine worn in the sun.

Symbol

• Classical Sculpture: Especially plaster casts from the Greco-Roman period, often tinted pink or blue.
• Rough 3D Rendering: Early computer-generated meshes and geometry, cheap-looking.
• Palm Trees: Representing leisure, vacation, and a consumerist paradise.
• Vintage Electronics: CRT monitors, Windows 95 interface, VHS videotapes.

Processing Techniques

• Low-Fidelity Effects: Intentionally preserving or adding pixelation, JPEG compression distortion, VHS noise.
• Glitch Art Art: Screen tearing, color separation, data stream effects

Music

Sampling 80s shopping mall background music, soothing jazz, elevator music, slowing down, looping, and adding reverb

• Sound effects: Windows system notification sounds, dial-up internet sounds, old-fashioned game console startup sounds
• Atmosphere: Spacious, with a strong sense of echo, like being in an empty shopping mall or an abandoned server room