Musical Retrofuturism Online Symposium, 18 & 19 August, 2022
Vaporwave, synthwave, and chiptune are just some of the many recent ‘microgenres’ of popular music that take inspiration from the past, particularly the 1980s and 1990s. They share a renewed embrace of cassette tapes, early video games, synthesizers, VHS, early Internet aesthetics, and outmoded computing technology. And yet these genres simultaneously display a fascination with the possibilities of technological progress, toying with utopia and dystopia in equal measure. This symposium brings such questions together under the rubric of ‘retrofuturism’—a term that denotes an embrace not simply of the past, but of lost sensations and the futuristic and anachronistic visions associated with a particular era.
Programme
(All times in BST)
Day 1 – Thursday 18 August
12:45 – 13:00: Welcome
13:00 – 14:30: Session 1: Vaporwave
Jorge Mercado
The Internet as Social Amplification: A Case Study in Caribbean Vaporwave
Nick Anderson
Schrödinger’s Genre: Multidimensionality of Deadness and Liveness in Vaporwave
Alican Koc
Neon-Nazis: Fashwave and the Atmospheric Appeal of Cultural Nostalgia
14:30 – 14:45: Break
14:45 – 16:15: Session 2: Materiality
Clare Lesser
Plunderphonics and Crate Digging: So Old it’s New, or ‘What Does it Mean to Follow a Ghost?’
Will Schrimshaw
Domesticating Synthesis
Juan Carlos Mendez Alvarez
Tape and Polaroids: Nostalgia and Tactility in the Instagram Archive of Emiliano Melis
16:15 – 16:30: Break
16:30 – 17:30: Session 3: Synthwave & Film
Michiel Kamp
Drive, Synthwave, Masculinity, and the Audiovisual Imaginaries of Neon-Noir
Mattia Merlini
More 1980s than the 1980s: Functions and Connotations of Synthwave Soundtracks
Day 2 – Friday 19 August
12:45 – 13:00: Welcome
13:00 – 14:30: Session 4: Hauntology
Lindsay Friday
‘Future Nostalgia’: Dua Lipa’s Album as Hauntological Product
Vincent Jenewein
The Utopian Promise of Retrofuturism. Lost Futures and the New in Mark Fisher, Fredric Jameson and Theodor Adorno
Lucy March
“Visions of a Gangsta”: Issues of Identity in Phonk’s Digital Revival
14:30 – 14:45: Break
14:45 – 16:15: Session 5: Retrotopia
Victoria Aschheim
The Minimalism and Maximalism of Alarm Will Sound’s 1969
Marc Brooks
Listening for unexpected futures in Luke Cage’s retro music score
George Reid
Chiptune and Nostalgia: Remediation, Counter Memory, and Chrononormativity
16:15 – 16:30: Break
16:30 – 17:30: Session 6: Synthwave & Methodology
Sebastiaan Frankes
Dreams of Futures Past: Timbral Analysis of Retrofuturism and Nostalgia in Synthwave
Sam Bennett
“The Myspace ‘Ice Age’: Tracking Synthwave through Digital Archives
Retrofuturism Symposium 2.0 