CARI Attribution Guidelines

CARI’s attribution practices are designed to direct attention to the artists who created the media we study for the purposes of artistic and sociopolitical research.

Our work as a project doing aesthetic research is to archive, organize, and deliver analytical insight, but the artists who create the works we study in the first place are the people who performed the initial labor.

The internet is overrun by “archival” projects that fail to put any amount of care or acknowledgement into the works they repost. We aim to be the alternative.

Foundational Artists

When we can identify a central artist or collective that developed the key traits of an aesthetic, they will be identified as Foundational Artists. Not all aesthetics have a clear founder however (since movements can have multiple origin points as a result of convergent evolution), so this attribute will only be found on pages where it is applicable.

Foundational Works

The oldest example we have credit for in our archive of the aesthetic. In cases where we can identify an initial cornerstone artwork for an aesthetic, they will be identified here. Not all aesthetics have a clear Foundational Work however, so this only applies to certain pages. If an aesthetic has several Foundational Works, they will be identified in the Notable Works section.

Foundational Researchers

The researcher(s) who created the first known moodboard or community analyzing media in the context of an aesthetic.

Name Coiner

The person who coined the accepted name for the aesthetic (who may or may not have been a Foundational Researcher as well).

These are cases where nobody can be identified to take credit for founding or coining the name of an aesthetic, in which case the reason for the name will be explained under the namesake.

Pending Research

When an aesthetic’s foundational researcher(s) or name coiner cannot be identified, we will note this with “Pending Research,” as a placeholder until we can uncover who deserves these credits.

Historical Name

When an aesthetic’s name is attributed to or a slightly modified version of a historical event.

"Y2K" is an abbreviation historically attributed to the programmer David Eddy, who oversaw fixing the Y2K bug, but as an aesthetic Evan Collins did the foundational research by creating the first archives studying the specific trend of art from that era.

Media Name

When an aesthetic is named directly after a notable piece of media in the style.

“Live Laugh Love” is a written platitude that is commonly found in the art & furniture of the aesthetic itself, so no researcher can claim that they “coined” this name for the aesthetic.

Music Genre Name

When an aesthetic is named directly after the music genre it features most heavily.

Vaporwave’s visual elements are so synonymous with the musical genre that we’ve chosen to stay with the genre’s name for simplicity.

Revival Name

When an aesthetic’s name is slightly modified to denote its revival in a later decade.

Typically, these aesthetics will add a prefix in their name, such as “Neo-Vectorheart” (the late revival of Vectorheart).

Practices

Our practices are heavily informed by Laika’s manifesto “Image Ethics and Best Practices”.

1. CARI will try to act in the spirit of offering as much context as possible, and being good stewards of information.
2. CARI will not post examples that we cannot provide credits to without first doing our due diligence to uncover the original creators and credit them.
   1. Given that the nature of our research deals with corporate entities who are notorious for contractually obscuring the designers of the work they commission (e.g. through Non-Disclosure Agreements, or crediting only their in-house design team without identifying specific employee names or external collaborators), we will do our best to provide as much contextual information as possible around the work’s creation.
   2. In scenarios like these, we may list the credit as “Designer Unknown,” in good faith and try to offer at least one other contextual detail (such as the year it was published) to establish a lead for other researchers to follow. This also gives the client or designer the opportunity to come forward and provide more information about the work for proper attribution.
   3. We will always try to link to the original creator’s page or an archival copy of it, so that people can engage with their work as directly as possible.
3. CARI will honor any requests for removal, and will not share the work of artists/designers that state reposting/publishing of their work is not permitted.
4. CARI will offer specific acknowledgement for any permission we obtain to share work that would normally be off limits for reposting.