4 ms·
The green-wireframe thing which this site somewhat misleadingly calls "Laser Grid" https://cari.institute/aesthetics/laser-grid https://cari.institute/aesthetic
by leoc 3y ago
The green-wireframe thing which this site somewhat misleadingly calls "Laser Grid" https://cari.institute/aesthetics/laser-grid https://cari.institute/aesthetics/laser-grid (the main influence is of course CRT vector graphics, with technical drawing and art inspired by it probably coming second and lasers well behind) played a much more central role in 1980s SFish commercial art's image of the future than you'd realise now. (You'd naturally see a lot of it on places like pulpy SF juvenile novels, not a source that's very well-represented on CARI.) Note that usually (though not always) the phosphor lines are quite crisp while the space between them remains uniformly dark, a respectable approximation to actual CRT vector images. Blown-out lines glowing like neon tubes, and mesh polygons which look like normal, lightable surfaces thanks to a glow or to light reflections, have more to do with synthwave https://cari.institute/aesthetics/synthwave https://cari.institute/aesthetics/synthwave and other recent pastiches than the real thing.
MICR https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magnetic_ink_character_recognition https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magnetic_ink_character_recogni... or MICR-inspired fonts as a totem of a Space Agey future is another part of the '80s visual language which hasn't made it into the nostalgia image of the '80s. But unlike the wireframe it definitely felt like an older ('60s-'70s) thing which was on its way out even then.
- chefandy 3y agoSure, but this is a list of aesthetics, not a list of techniques or tools. Their artist-assigned labels may have nothing to do with how they were created. For example, "Corporate Memphis" has nothing to do with the Memphis Group or the design movement they drove in the 80s— it stemmed from a Facebook documentation branding initiative that was just another page in the big book of bland postmodern corporate art. However, artists and designers needed to reason about that aesthetic differently than, say, an art historian, called it "Corporate Memphis" because of several key aesthetic similarities to the Memphis design movement and it's distinct corporate blandness.
- morkalork 3y agoI don't have anything to add to the argument just that I happened to watch Escape from New York this weekend and there's an epic "green laser grid" sequence as he flies in to the city! https://youtu.be/xxYmMRxnEic?si=J62FQIU-V7-9BI8x https://youtu.be/xxYmMRxnEic?si=J62FQIU-V7-9BI8x Edit: and apparently they did it with practical effects rather than actually animating with a computer? Seems like they were aiming for that exact aesthetic.
- leoc 3y ago> and apparently they did it with practical effects rather than actually animating with a computer? The same was (perhaps not suprisingly) true of the computer displays in Kubrik's 2001, apparently. https://www.quora.com/Were-the-wireframe-models-on-the-screens-in-2001-A-Space-Odyssey-actual-CGI/answer/David-Mullich https://www.quora.com/Were-the-wireframe-models-on-the-scree... https://twitter.com/2001archives/status/1010885260274352128 https://twitter.com/2001archives/status/1010885260274352128 https://archive.ph/npCBf https://archive.ph/npCBf https://archive.org/details/AmericanCinematographerJune1968/page/n3/mode/2up https://archive.org/details/AmericanCinematographerJune1968/... (Apparently more or less the first example of genuinely computer-generated or -manipulated graphics in a "real" live-action film or TV production was the Gunslinger's "Terminator-vision" from (the original, 1973) Westworld.)