With great pleasure I present to you the Vapor Wave Gallery of CT101 student work. Answering the open call for submissions on the NET-ART website powered by the CUNY Academic Commons, we hope you will enjoy the show!

Click here to View the Gallery

How did this start?

Inspired by this great blog post previously published by professor Michael Branson Smith we set off to explore and experiment the genre as a class. The intention was to run through a series of class tutorials and then go off independently to generate images. Now that the gallery is place, what do you think? Lets share the links far and wide with our friends, family and network! Also, lets be sure to leave a comment on the gallery page – click here then scroll to the bottom of the page and leave your sentiments! What did think of the process? Did you fall in love with Vapor Wave Aesthetic? Did you dig into the audio aspects of the genre? Share what you feel, perhaps it reminds you of “something” – comment here!

Vapor Wave is a vast and unique community! The musical aspect is huge, and the accompanying visuals are so attractive and contagious. The possibilities of how and where the aesthetic can be applied is even more expansive than we thought! You might ask yourself, why haven’t I heard of this before? Good question! It all seems to start with getting your feet wet with these two videos below, a little history really helps.

The gallery is an energetic series of our first static outcomes! These pieces set a tone for what is possible, and how we can push ourselves further. CT101 students are new to many of the software applications used in the course. We learned and applied a ton of new skills with adobe photoshop to create the digital collage works. Importing files, creating graphic assets, working with layers and gradients are all a part of the process. Saving files and exporting various file formats for the web were also explored and tested. We rocked it!

I want to make some MORE Vapor Wave Art! (right?)

A great way to get started and continue is by doing your own research and finding a tutorial or two that you can follow along with. I suggest these two below: (many more on youtube)

  1. Creating Vapor Wave – 1 – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hKokry41Ixg
  2. Creating Vapor Wave – 2 – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aJ_ZT0Phfo4

The tutorials are great to work along with. But alas! What if you don’t have access to adobe photoshop? Is there an alternative? Indeed, you can use web browser applications like:

  1. Pixlr – https://pixlr.com/
  2. GIMP – https://www.gimp.org/
  3. Get Paint ( For PC users) https://www.getpaint.net/index.html

If you are looking for pre-made vapor wave elements, content and graphic assets you can easily grab a series of transparent images from doing a quick search that simply reads: “transparent vapor wave graphics“. The vapor wave community is proactive in sharing and uploading transparent graphics making it accessible and immediate for anyone to get involved.

Did you want to participate? Check the NET ART open call for submissions here. <—- Click 

e-mail me for more info – rseslow at york.cuny.edu