2014-10-24
Evan Collins creates an Imgur album titled "Y2K Aesthetic - An investigation into the aesthetic of the period approx. 1996-03." to gather examples of media that documented this style. (Originally titled "y2k futurism")
From "A Chat With The Founder Of The Institute For Y2K Aesthetics" published on PAPER on 05/22/16: "After I posted it to the vaporwave subreddit, people seemed interested and wanted to see more examples, so I started to search further. I became a bit obsessive, collecting the ~900 examples seen in this imgur album in October 2014 (I realize now that some of them aren't spot on, though). From that point on, I just kept collecting more and more examples from every field (architecture, art, fashion, industrial design, cars, music, etc.). I guess what keeps me invested in the period is the search for every little lost/obscure item, and the desire to develop a complete understanding of the era. So much material from that time is just lost due to lack of archiving, low-resolution uploads, and now-incompatible media formats, it becomes an exciting challenge just to find something intact. I also find it fascinating how ephemeral the aesthetic was, and how completely forgotten it seems now."
