Post Vaporwave Anthropologies with Andrea (@miu-spell)

Andrea Has an array of colorful maximalist hyperreality NFTs on SuperRare. In this interview, I hope to understand the philosophical and textual underpinnings of her work, and how it congregates into a larger, post-vaporwave aesthetic. 

Andrea: I started as a painter, but after a few years, I realized that I was desperately missing some movement in my production, so I began to work on exploring a moving image. I learned film structure, camera rules, editing techniques, and I played with different types of light and gradually I started with animation. In the end, the circle closed again and at the moment I am mainly dealing with static images that I create in programs. 

Andrea: My research focuses more on the composition of the image and the calming of all the elements. I feel more connected with all the process when I use digital medial; for me the computer is more of a tool rather than an object. 

Andrea: Around 2016, I started working on my glitch film, which used the data moshing technique. Datamoshing is a type of glitch art which, in the context of art history, can be broadly defined as art created by corrupting or otherwise manipulating an existing file that has roots in the net art movement of the early aughts.

I would call my style as post-meta digital. My visual research balances between future and past, body and void, beauty and creeps, pain and pleasure, disappointment and chance. My great inspiration is all living organisms and their challenges. 

Andrea: I use digital painting as a way to unwind, so I often sit with a head full of thoughts in front of my laptop and just play with different shapes and materials. When I have a concept, it’s usually more complicated. First, I need to know if it will be series or one painting. Then, I’ll write down some notes about the project, and finally draw the scene and prepare materials that I’ll use. I work on both Windows and Mac. I test a lot of AI software now: Gaugan, Deep Angel, Thing Translator, Swarm intelligence system. Most of all, I also like technologies with which you can work on a script and create an entire story using code. However, I have mostly used 3D and 2D techniques from commonly available programs. 

Farocki (German filmmaker) for his explicitly political essay films, through which he examined severe subjects while also openly confronting the inherently persuasive, manipulative properties of the cinematic medium. He named it so much in cinematography as fantom shots (shots which have not been shot from a human perspective) or operative images and much more. He is a great inspiration for me. 

Franz Kafka, who depicted absolutely stunning images of human transformation that were able to capture all of the depressing and cycling human effort in our life system. 

Toyen, who has countless different paintings based on the organisms and colors around us. Above all, all the textures and structures she adds to the canvas are stunning.

Donna Haraway (American historian of science and feminist). Her most famous text remains the Cyborg Manifesto, published in 1985.

Cyber-feminism is not a unified paradigm but a network of activities in art, culture, theory, and technology. The differences between nature, culture, and technology are disappearing today. Animals, humans, and machines are melting together to cyborgs – computer-humans. 

My beginnings were formed with the film, very dark short films influenced by D. Lync’s early films, now I work in a different tonality. Vibrant, vivid colors. My topics turned more to environmental issues, the extinction of animals, understanding the world as a whole through cosmology. I try to go deeper and deeper and reflect on topics that I find important. Now I am preparing a project that is about colonizing the universe and mining space asteroids.