Cyberdream VR: Visualizing rave music and vaporwave in virtual reality

Abstract

Cyberdream VR is a short artistic virtual reality (VR) experience, which is based on the concept of visualizing the imaginative worlds suggested by rave music and vaporwave as symbolic, spatial, virtual environments. The piece is conceptualized as a virtual hallucination through the broken techno-utopias of cyberspace. Aesthetically, the work adapts the forms of 1990s VJ performance, demoscene animations, and the visual language of rave fliers from this era, constructing these forms as virtual spaces that the user can enter into through VR. Drawing upon the Internet-borne music subculture vaporwave, the piece also deconstructs the visual language of 1990s technoutopian computer culture. By transporting the user into the imaginative worlds suggested by rave music and vaporwave, Cyberdream VR more broadly indicates a possible approach to visualizing music that prioritizes symbolic representation. In the future, this approach could be applied for other types of music and yield new transformative approaches to music visualization that may eventually be automated.