Anachronism - a chronological inconsistency in some arrangement, especially a juxtaposition of person(s), events, objects, or customs from different periods of time.
Hauntology - The term refers to the state of temporal, historical, and ontological disjunction in which the ostensible immediacy of presence is replaced by "the figure of the ghost as that which is neither present, nor absent, neither dead nor alive
Kitsch - a low-brow style of mass-produced art or design using popular or cultural icons.
'…faced with 21st Century music, it is the very sense of future shock which has disappeared. This is quickly established by performing a simple thought experiment. Imagine any record released in the past couple of years being beamed back in time to, say, 1995 and played on the radio. It’s hard to think that it will produce any jolt in the listeners. On the contrary, what would be likely to shock our 1995 audience would be the very recognisability of the sounds: would music really have changed so little in the next seventeen years? Contrast this with the rapid turnover of styles between the 1960s and the 90s: play a jungle record from 1993 to someone in 1989 and it would have sounded like something so new that it challenged them to rethink what music was, or could be.'
(http://thequietus.com/articles/13004-mark-fisher-ghosts-of-my-life-extract)
It seems to me exceedingly symptomatic to find the very style of nostalgia films invading and colonizing even those movies today which have contemporary settings, as though, for some reason, we were unable today to focus our own present, as though we had become incapable of achieving aesthetic representations of our own current experience.
Fredric Jameson, ‘Postmodernism And Consumer Society’ in The Cultural Turn: Selected Writings On The Postmodern, 1983-1998, Verso, 1998, pp9-10.)
Belying its origins in these fusty adventure series forms, Star Wars could appear new because its then unprecedented special effects relied upon the latest technology. If, in a paradigmatically modernist way, Kraftwerk used technology to allow new forms to emerge, the nostalgia mode subordinated technology to the task of refurbishing the old. The effect was to disguise the disappearance of the future as its opposite.
Belying its origins in these fusty adventure series forms, Star Wars could appear new because its then unprecedented special effects relied upon the latest technology. If, in a paradigmatically modernist way, Kraftwerk used technology to allow new forms to emerge, the nostalgia mode subordinated technology to the task of refurbishing the old. The effect was to disguise the disappearance of the future as its opposite.
As public service broadcasting became ‘marketized’, there was an increased tendency to turn out cultural productions that resembled what was already successful.
(http://thequietus.com/articles/13004-mark-fisher-ghosts-of-my-life-extract)
http://boingboing.net/2012/10/12/hauntologists-mine-the-past-fo.html
http://www.theguardian.com/books/booksblog/2011/jun/17/hauntology-critical
(http://thequietus.com/articles/13004-mark-fisher-ghosts-of-my-life-extract)
http://boingboing.net/2012/10/12/hauntologists-mine-the-past-fo.html
http://www.theguardian.com/books/booksblog/2011/jun/17/hauntology-critical
Links:
https://dj.dancecult.net/index.php/dancecult/article/view/674/622
Delete a tweet, change your Facebook profile, churn out new images on Tumblr and Pinterest, change your message-board handle, and you can reinvent yourself with ease.
http://www.avclub.com/article/the-tumblr-trap-is-internet-culture-turning-musici-71132
Internet Muisc Genres and Aesthetics
Vapourwave
'Imagine taking bits of 80's Muzak, late-night infomercials, smooth jazz, and that tinny tune receptionists play when they put you on hold, then chopping that up, pitching it down, and scrambling it to the point where you’ve got saxophone goo dripping out of a cheap plastic valve. That’s vapourwave.'
Internet Muisc Genres and Aesthetics
Vapourwave
'Imagine taking bits of 80's Muzak, late-night infomercials, smooth jazz, and that tinny tune receptionists play when they put you on hold, then chopping that up, pitching it down, and scrambling it to the point where you’ve got saxophone goo dripping out of a cheap plastic valve. That’s vapourwave.'
Michelle Lhooq for Thump (June 25, 2013)
http://www.dummymag.com/features/adam-harper-vaporwave
http://rougesfoam.blogspot.co.uk/2013/08/some-chillwave-differences.html
Crystal Magic (Various Artists
Hypnagogic Pop
http://www.dummymag.com/features/adam-harper-vaporwave
http://rougesfoam.blogspot.co.uk/2013/08/some-chillwave-differences.html
Hypnagogic Pop
Hauntological art (i.e. art that permits a hauntological reading, art that has hauntological aesthetic effects) can be thought of as having two stages, or layers. The first layer seems to present something that’s in some way idealised – this is often but not always an image involving the past.
The second, ‘hauntological’ layer problematises, compromises and obfuscates the first layer, undermining or damaging it in some way and introducing irony into the work, and represents the opinionated viewpoint of the present.
http://rougesfoam.blogspot.co.uk/2009/10/hauntology-past-inside-present.html
My interpretation on the idea of Hauntology is that culture has almost come to a stand still, everything seemingly new in modern day culture has in fact elements of the past which 'haunt' it. This is down to the avalibility of information and our now completely recorded past, which is accessible for anyone with internet access through youtube, blog archives ect. This idea can be seen through recent emerging internet music genres such as vapourware and the visual style which coincides with it, using early 90s computer graphics and sampling 80s/90s infomercials and default plug-in sounds - originally in an ironic way - has evolved into a growing community with artists gaining mainstream media attention. One of the things that has stood out to me so far in my research was Mark Fisher's thought experiment: 'play a jungle record from 1993 to someone in 1989 and it would have sounded like something so new that it challenged them to rethink what music was, or could be.' Jungle music could not have been compared to anything before it even if you went back only a few years to 1989 whereas in 2015 you would struggle to show anyone a piece of current music that would surprise them or evoke such a reaction.
The second, ‘hauntological’ layer problematises, compromises and obfuscates the first layer, undermining or damaging it in some way and introducing irony into the work, and represents the opinionated viewpoint of the present.
http://rougesfoam.blogspot.co.uk/2009/10/hauntology-past-inside-present.html
My interpretation on the idea of Hauntology is that culture has almost come to a stand still, everything seemingly new in modern day culture has in fact elements of the past which 'haunt' it. This is down to the avalibility of information and our now completely recorded past, which is accessible for anyone with internet access through youtube, blog archives ect. This idea can be seen through recent emerging internet music genres such as vapourware and the visual style which coincides with it, using early 90s computer graphics and sampling 80s/90s infomercials and default plug-in sounds - originally in an ironic way - has evolved into a growing community with artists gaining mainstream media attention. One of the things that has stood out to me so far in my research was Mark Fisher's thought experiment: 'play a jungle record from 1993 to someone in 1989 and it would have sounded like something so new that it challenged them to rethink what music was, or could be.' Jungle music could not have been compared to anything before it even if you went back only a few years to 1989 whereas in 2015 you would struggle to show anyone a piece of current music that would surprise them or evoke such a reaction.
Music/Visual Examples
Burial
Demdike Stare
Ghost Box
Record label commonly associated with Hãüñtōłøgÿ. Set up by Julian House and Jim Jupp, they use Hauntology to create alternative realities within their music videos by applying elements of the past to and sign artists that use hauntological aspects in their music.
Rezzett
Hurfyd (youtube channel)
Channel that uploads new house/techno tracks and combines them with videos found on the internet to create a new experience. There is no context or reasoning behind choosing the videos and they vary in visual style and time period they are sourced from, however when viewed as a set (as done on the youtube channel) it is clear that they can all be put under the same category.
David Dean Burkheart
http://www.nightoftheworld.com/writingfiles/hauntprimer.html
Scarfolk
Scarfolk, which is forever locked in the 1970s, is a satire not only of that decade but also of contemporary events. It touches on themes of totalitarianism, suburban life, occultism & religion, school & childhood, as well as social attitudes such as racism and sexism, and it frequently blurs the lines between fact and fiction, horror and comedy.
Scarfolk was initially presented as a fake blog which purportedly releases artefacts from the town council's archive. Artefacts include public information literature, out-of-print books, record and cassette sleeves, advertisements, television programme screenshots, household products, and audio and video, many of which suggest brands and imagery recognisable from the period. Additionally, artefacts are usually accompanied by short fictional vignettes which are also presented as factual and introduce residents of Scarfolk.
In a way this satirical commentary Scarfolk are using resembles what varpourwave has done just drawing from a different decade (late 90s) which could imply that the genre originally took an ironic approach, finding humour and fascination with the early rudimentary digital graphics that were around at that time.
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