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How liminalism became the defining aesthetic
- dvt 4mo agoCalling liminalism the "defining" aesthetic of our time is a bit much (though I get the article is trying to hitch its wagon to the Backrooms, aka the "current popular thing"). It's an aesthetic microniche, about as popular as vaporwave, or cyberpunk, grunge, or Y2K (think flip phones, bulky plastic cameras, etc.). There's a ton of these, and some are surprising: for example, there's even been a relatively recent revival of the "old-money" aesthetic, especially motivated by fashion brands like Rowing Blazers, etc.
- appplication 4mo agoI thought similarly, but the article actually was published prior to Backrooms movie release and popularity, though there is a nod they were aware the concept was being optioned to A24. Though I agree, “defining” might be a bit strong.
- krackers 4mo agoThe same art world (or more specifically the "Consumer Aesthetics Research Institute") also named "Frutiger Aero" the defining aesthetic of 2000s, even though it was really only seen in a few places (Aqua aesthetic is very different from Aero). All of this should probably be taken with grains of salt.
- keiferski 4mo agoThere is no “official opinion” of the art world. These are just different organizations with their own opinions.
- timr 4mo agoIn fact, when you see someone in the art world claiming that X is a "defining" anything, it usually means that they have a big collection of X for sale. In this case, I imagine it's submarine marketing for the movie that's out.
- picofarad 4mo agoSubmarine? Astro-turf or native-advertising, maybe? Or perhaps I misunderstood.
- timr 4mo agoBasically the same. An “article” planted by a PR firm, where the promotional target just happens to pop up about halfway through.
- hax0ron3 4mo agoI'm not sure this magazine is nearly popular enough for that to be worth it.
- RugnirViking 4mo agohacker news is, though. I'd be interested to see if the same article has been posted to two dozen subreddits etc (though not so interested as to actually do anything about it lol)
- sph 4mo agoI never got why Frutiger Aero got so popular as a ‘nostalgic’ aesthetic, when it’s basically the Windows Vista, GNOME 3 (the awful rewrite of GNOME 2), KDE 4.0 (the buggy, emo black rewrite of KDE 3) look? It was the lowest point of computer graphics. Who the hell is nostalgic for that? Probably just kids that had their formative years in those ~2-3 years. Not sure you can even call it a niche. I’m a fan on the vaporwave/Windows 2000/XP aesthetic, the Vista era is when everything started going to shit.
- satvikpendem 4mo agoWell yes, nostalgia is based on age. The people who are nostalgic for that grew up with those sorts of UI.
- fhars 4mo agoYeah, even nostalgia is no longer what it used to be... Welcome to old age :-).
- richardjdare 4mo agoIts fascinating to me. I grew up in the UK home computer scene of the mid 80s-early 90s. After this, the Frutiger Aero aesthetic seemed to me redolent of the total corporatization of what previously seemed a much more human and approachable computer world. Now everything was behind glass, impossibly polished by unfathomable, expensive machines. I found it totally alienating.
- Modified3019 4mo agoSame, I hated when everything transitioned to it and became harder to read as a result. Frutiger Aero was a sterile sort of cheerful in a way only a CEO could think was relatable. It basically marked the turning point where the UI stopped being something janky that felt human made, into a mass produced corporate template. Looking at it felt like the visual equivalent of licking soap. Every time I see it now, I can only think “good riddance”.
- tobr 4mo agoIs CARI part of the ”art world”? Where have CARI said that Frutiger Aero was ”the defining” aesthetic of 2000s? They are working to identify many different aesthetic trends that existed in parallel, not one that defines each decade. Their description of Frutiger Aero explicitly includes Aqua, both mentioned by name and included visually: https://www.are.na/consumer-aesthetics-research-institute/frutiger-aero-ptg8tgmzbig https://www.are.na/consumer-aesthetics-research-institute/fr...
- esperent 4mo agoAlso, for places metro stations/gyms it's more of a maintenance and hygiene thing rather than an aesthetic. I'm currently in Paris so I've seen a ton of metro stations recently and really, unless you arrived in the dead of night so that you could snap an empty photo like the one in the article, there's nothing much liminal about them. A space can't be liminal if it's packed with people, buskers, beggars, dogs, etc. In that case, what it is is minimal or functional.
- Schlagbohrer 4mo agoBut the abandonment of a place which should be filled with life is a huge aspect of the liminal art movement. It speaks to the hollowing out of public life in north america and britain.
- no-name-here 4mo agoIs the abandonment of places that should be filled with life a defining aspect of today? Which places? Malls & COVID? I guess they exist but are they especially prevalent today?
- idiotsecant 4mo agoYes, a lot of public spaces are dying or dead. If you don't have these spaces in your area you are certainly the only exception.
- no-name-here 4mo ago> a lot of public spaces are dying or dead How are you quantifying that? Is there somewherei can go to read about it?
- Schlagbohrer 4mo agoI can just go walk around my hometown of Seattle and see all the dead or torn-down shopping malls.
- acidhousemcnab 4mo agoAnti-space, no space, nothingness - annihilation.
- gosub100 4mo agobland-ness, anti-self-expression, fear of being 'called-out'
- acidhousemcnab 4mo agoaccepted and transduce'd transgression, creeping nihilisms, sink plug hole funnel
- deleted 4mo ago[deleted]
- Trasmatta 4mo agoLiminialism is way way more popular these days than cyberpunk or anything like that. Please go talk to a group of teenagers if you don't believe me.
- lenerdenator 4mo agoAll of the ones you list have one thing in common: They have at least some root in nostalgia.
- aaron695 4mo ago[dead]
- royal__ 4mo agoInteresting article, but calling it THE defining aesthetic of our time feels a bit sensational.
- readthenotes1 4mo ago"our particular slice of dystopian late capitalism." Did not call it the aesthetic of our time since the term was first used for post world war I economies. We must be in late-to-its-own-funeral capitalism.
- _0ffh 4mo agoI blame it on the art world being full of pseudo-intellectual little shits, so of course they get off on the Marxian esthetic of throwing around signalling phrases like "late capitalism". They live and die by pretense, there just isn't anything more than that to these "people". All facade, nothing inside. The average LLM has more soul than these types, I fear.
- frollogaston 4mo agoA ton of liminal space photos are of Soviet era stuff, especially brutalist architecture.
- mystraline 4mo agoIve always felt that the Art World seems to talk in its own tone. And that tone is arrogant, looking down on people, and haughtiness. Words dont mean with the Art World as they normally do. And definitions are scarce, since you are expected to innately know them, or be 'out'.
- krelian 4mo agoWhat are some terms that would have benefitted from elucidations? Also can you give an example were the tone felt arrogant?
- p_j_w 4mo agoWhere in this article do you feel that people are being looked down on?
- isomorphic 4mo ago> Liminalism (if we can christen this as a movement, and we should) is a form dedicated to the discovery of digital found art. It is important not just because of its content, but because it signals the migration of critical terminology and thinking into popular discourse in a truly democratic sense, independent of the traditional confines of the art industry as expressed in exhibitions, galleries, and museums. This is not the language of an elitist. If anything, it sounds like someone defending Liminalism's inclusion in the contemporary canon from arrogant elitists.
- antonvs 4mo agoIt’s just one group of elitists slap-fighting another. Are we really supposed to take seriously that “liminalism is the defining aesthetic of our time”? > This is not the language of an elitist. It absolutely is. Someone claiming to tell you what is “important”, what is “truly democratic”, in contradiction to “traditional” structures is elitism at its most insufferable.
- mystraline 4mo agoIt is definitely that. But the art critics also use very loaded terms and such to also confuse any discussion. That language is also used to identify the 'in' crowd too. Examples: "Emptied of stores and absent of humans, Columbus’s photograph captures the melancholic discomfort of liminal aesthetics — the strange, simultaneous pull of disquiet and nostalgia that makes this bottom-up, crowd-curated digital movement among the most pertinent and explicit artistic reactions to the strange, surreal experience of living in our particular moment of dystopian late capitalism." Holy run-on dense sentence, Batman! The amount of connected jargon (and overloading the jargon) is said in such a way that you cant engage with it. That should have been 3 sentences. "As an internet phenomenon, the most recent iteration of liminal aesthetics can be primarily traced to a 2019 Creepypasta collaborative short story entitled “The Backrooms,” which first appeared on the message board 4chan." And heres a backup of the original 4chan post https://archive.4plebs.org/x/thread/22661164/#22661164 https://archive.4plebs.org/x/thread/22661164/#22661164 As much as 4chan spouts (slur for black people, slur for gay people, pro-nazi propaganda), that thread is super approachable by everyone. 'Post your disquieting images that feel off'. "Obviously, the clearest thematic precursor to Liminalism is Edward Hopper. There is a stolid, individualistic, bootstrapping Protestant work ethic element to Hopper’s work, which is, in its sheer insanity, the wellspring of the alienation implicit in Liminalism." First, the definition is researching that artist, and trying to even understand their place and all the hidden meanings there. But the point is name dropping, showing the "in group" that they really totally know what theyre talking about. The reality is that art really is for everyone! Humans have been making art since before we were homo sapiens. The problem is the arrogant art critique world is trying to gatekeep "art" to their own definitions and nomenclature that excludes the masses.
- kaycebasques 4mo ago> The image exemplifies the popular internet aesthetic of “liminality”: the exploration of spaces that appear “in between,” that are uncanny and uncomfortable despite being mundane or familiar. Liminal in the context of liminal dreaming has very different emotional connotations. Liminal dreaming is the state where you are beginning to fall asleep but are not quite there (hence liminal because you're on the border between awake and asleep). You can also experience it at the end of a sleep as you transition back into being awake. It's a flowing place where colors, shapes, and sounds keep morphing in very interesting and often beautiful ways. Unlike lucid dreaming there is no notion of being in control. Supposedly this was a secret to the creativity of Dali. He would sit in a chair with some keys in his hand and allow himself to drift off. When he fell asleep the keys would fall out of his hand, hit the floor, and the sound would wake him up. Then he would draw whatever he had been imagining during the liminal dreaming right there on the spot. Edison supposedly also had a similar trick. Supposedly. I have sometimes imagined some really beautiful (and catchy!) music but I've never been able to remember it in detail after waking.
- nandomrumber 4mo agoLiminal dreaming. Ain’t never heard that before, sounds like pseudoscience woo-woo to me. The proper term is hypnagogia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hypnagogia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hypnagogia
- HeartStrings 4mo agoNot voovoo. Tested, works. Used by Lynch and Dali to inspire dreamlike works. Used by Edison to aid solving complex problems https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/thomas-edisons-naps-inspire-a-way-to-spark-your-own-creativity/ https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/thomas-edisons-na... Studies showed better math solving after hypnogagia state: https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC8654287/ https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC8654287/ https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/sciadv.abj5866 https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/sciadv.abj5866
- nandomrumber 4mo ago
- keiferski 4mo agoA few years ago I spent awhile researching liminality for a blog post: https://onthearts.com/p/what-are-liminal-spaces-and-why-are https://onthearts.com/p/what-are-liminal-spaces-and-why-are I don’t think it’s as directly attributable to “late capitalism,” as the article suggests. I speculated on a few ideas: - We Have No “Coming-of-Age” Rituals - Nostalgia - Our Cities are Transportation Networks - Modern Political Systems are Extremely Liminal - The Death of God - We Lack a Process-Oriented Language Anyway you might find it interesting!
- officialchicken 4mo agoYeah, no. I'd say we're still looking for the most inexpensive variant of Modernism 125+ years after it's introduction - aesthetic driven entirely by the capabilities of machines that created it, embodied by Apple, every look-alike 4-door SUV, and anticontextual urban ruins of oversized-tiled econoboxes warehouses.
- Invictus0 4mo agoA lot of the images in the article aren't actually that liminal. This stuff is maybe more liminal: https://x.com/PenguinWeb3/status/2063196355011424582?s=20 https://x.com/PenguinWeb3/status/2063196355011424582?s=20
- mcphage 4mo agoThose are interesting, but not liminal.
- floren 4mo agoLiminalism? Nah thanks sorry I'm into littoralism these days, give me coastlines and beaches.
- Terr_ 4mo agoSome get too salty about it, and their heads need riparian.
- mr_toad 4mo agoFunny, because the Celts, who came up with the idea of thin spaces long before it was cool, did see coastlines as a kind of border between worlds (in a supernatural way, not just the mundane border between land and sea).
- floren 4mo agoYeah as I was making my shitpost I realized that a coastline entirely meets the actual definition of "liminal" (as opposed to the common usage, "teens pretending to be scared by an empty office break room")
- OhioMan2943 4mo agoExcept for the fact that modern design aesthetic has eliminated spaces with an uncontrolled and ambient vibe. Which makes this article bs.
- timr 4mo agoIt's so weird to open a page on HN and see a photo of a place that I went to all the time as a child, but as some kind of abandoned-space porn for Zoomers (Century III mall).
- keiferski 4mo agoSame here! I haven’t been by the area for years but I guess it’s in a state of demolition currently.
- timr 4mo agoI randomly drove by there back in about 2018 or so when I happened to be in Pittsburgh for a weekend. The parking lot was empty, so it must have closed by that time, but it was still intact. Very intense memories of going there with my grandparents as a little kid, riding the holiday train, seeing Santa, etc. Even met the handyman from Mr Rogers Neighborhood one time! Ah, the 80s.
- Jordan-117 4mo agoThere's an interesting connection to draw between liminal spaces (especially the Backrooms variety) and the "latent space" concept from AI, both mechanically and sociologically. Basically, generative AI is an industrial-scale blend of almost every image and concept in human history, and within the labyrinthine, uninterpretable neural networks that power it, you can "find" every conceivable combination of objects, styles, and features. It won't always make sense, but everything (or a plausible echo of everything) is in there, somewhere, mindlessly assembled by a process that even its creators do not fully understand. Call it a metaphor for how late capitalism swallows up every movement, trend, and icon and churns out endless copies and imitations, each a little more degraded and disconnected from the original intention than the last. Like the way McMansions echo traditional architectural features, but shrunken, toylike, and not fit for purpose beyond a vague signaling at wealth and taste. In a society that feels increasingly overrun by these kinds of blind processes and cultural distillations, an aesthetic that connects it to a physical place (and one that happens to resemble so many anonymous places around the world and in our collective dreams and memories) is bound to be compelling. And how appropriate that it came to prominence not through any particular creator, but through an anonymous post expounded on via the internet.
- zwischenzug 4mo agoThis should be an essay.
- barrenko 4mo ago+
- pixl97 4mo agohttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simulacra_and_Simulation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simulacra_and_Simulation
- breadsniffer 4mo ago+1
- Terr_ 4mo ago
- whilenot-dev 4mo agoThe thing that introduced me to the aesthetics of liminal spaces was a video about the DOOM mod "MyHouse.WAD"[0], it's a technical fascination as much as it is an aesthetic one. There is no mention of it in the article, despite 18M views on YouTube. It was inspired by the novel House of Leaves[1], released in 2000, which "redefined modern horror". I think that aesthetic follows a natural progression from creepypasta[2], mixed with some nostalgia for the eeriness playing Resident Evil-type of games as a kid, the satisfying feeling to watch empires collapse, going nowhere yet being nowhere, and the constant desire of the internet to long for niche cultures. [0]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5wAo54DHDY0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5wAo54DHDY0 [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/House_of_Leaves#Legacy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/House_of_Leaves#Legacy [2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Creepypasta https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Creepypasta
- deleted 4mo ago[deleted]
- kombookcha 4mo agoMyHouse.WAD is a genuine work of art. Anybody who is even tangentially interested in video games as an artistic medium should look into it, because it really is astounding.
- tobolek 4mo agothis reminds me of Kenopsia: the eerie, forlorn atmosphere of a place that is usually bustling with people but is now abandoned and quiet. (ref. The Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows)
- deleted 4mo ago[deleted]
- NoboruWataya 4mo agoI know the trend from the LiminalSpace subreddit. It's nice to scroll through, peaceful yet slightly unsettling. But I think a lot of that effect comes less from the physical "in-between-ness" of the spaces and more from the fact that they are places you would expect to have people, but which don't. The article notes this but only in passing. You never see a photo of a busy corridor, for example. They are always empty which is what gives them that uncanny feeling. I went over to that subreddit now and there are even a couple of photos of people's homes, which are surely the opposite of liminal spaces. But they appear not only empty but also anachronistic (with, eg, 70s decor or older wallpaper) which also seems to be a trend with this aesthetic.
- 4bpp 4mo agoMaybe I'm slightly projecting my European sensitivities here, but I think there is more going on there than just the emptiness. There is a common theme that the spaces depicted are, on their own, quite unpleasant (barren, made from flimsy materials, probably emitting some amount of toxic fumes); it's just that this unpleasantness is normally masked by their human use and interpretation, which invariably some form of commercialism and hype. (Hence the abundance of hastily erected American mall architecture.) A historical European town devoid of people does not work as a liminal space picture at all, because it still looks nice; and neither do the postapocalyptic settings that Japan is so fond of (YKK etc.). Eastern European commieblock and UK Brutalist hellscapes are actually quite similar in terms of the feeling they evoke, and have their own fandoms, but are considered their own genre - so I would conclude that "liminal space porn" is spaces only made tolerable by commercialism with the commercialism taken away, and the related "/r/UrbanHell" material is spaces only made tolerable by human habitation with that taken away or suppressed (e.g. if the humans are so bereft of vitality that they can no longer overcome the space's badness).
- mystraline 4mo agoI get and agree with what youre saying. Its the combination of capitalism and lowest bidder architecture that is alienating to humans. And if humans are present, makes the space tolerable. Remove the humans, and the space is off-putting, eerie and has a sense of dread. And yeah, brutalism (usage of concrete as primary architecture) is also seen in the USA. And frankly, most of the buildings feel like prisons, and not where you want to go. Look no further than Indiana Univerity Hermann Wells library. https://maps.app.goo.gl/6FDvKR9sHSk3z8v56 https://maps.app.goo.gl/6FDvKR9sHSk3z8v56 Brutalist buildings feel directly hostile to humans, and not a vague sense of dread. However I had the pleasure of seeing a brutalist hotel in Iceland (Fosshotel Vatnajokull) which combines concrete with wood. It felt sturdy and powerful, but also soft and welcoming. https://maps.app.goo.gl/wnXEawh2wptmQ3Rd7 https://maps.app.goo.gl/wnXEawh2wptmQ3Rd7 But yeah, I do think youre on the right track. It really is related to capitalism and making horrible spaces (malls, etc). And without people, they are alienating and mild dread-inducing.
- Npovview 4mo ago[dead]
- metalman 4mo agoI run an off grid metal working business on an old salt water farm, the guy trying to help me with getting my back office up to date is tradeing his skills for a room in a Karate dojo that is housed in a defunct bank inside a semi dormant mall, he and the Karate master also come and work at my shop doing metal work, and he is constantly pulling out his phone to talk to grock or claude building an app, and generating letters for business purposes, but back to the same mall, waaaaaaaaay at the other end is a thrift store where may be found books, often cast off from university students leaving behind there uncracked textbooks on everything, including computer science, which seems quaint, and fitting in the dead mall setting. edit: cant be complete without https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=NuSbELCNloc https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=NuSbELCNloc
- tribal808 4mo agoit just feels like nostalgia for the 90s. we all remember those empty malls and airports before smartphones took over our attention. it is comforting in a weird way.
- bikeshaving 4mo agoMy favorite example of liminalism is Everything Empty Always Alone, a man on YouTube in his 40s who claims to be a time traveler and films himself walking and driving around empty metropolitan areas. He claims he’s recording from some sort of alternate universe, but it’s likely he’s just at these locations at odd hours. In any case, it’s fun outsider art. Or maybe it’s all true you never know. https://www.youtube.com/@EverythingEmptyAlwaysAlone/videos https://www.youtube.com/@EverythingEmptyAlwaysAlone/videos
- exvi 4mo agoto me it seems exactly the same as urban exploration photography, except limited only to corporate spaces. or Portal and The Stanley Parable combined with creepypasta. personally, i don't find the aesthetic nostalgic because i went to school in a former office building... but whatever, if it makes people happy, i can't judge them.
- cyber_kinetist 4mo agohttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hauntology https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hauntology
- DoneWithAllThat 4mo ago“How a popular movie confirms my priors”
- dyauspitr 4mo agoIt’s some memes. No one is intentionally designing architecture with bare beige walls and flickering tube lights. Also, most of the images in the article don’t actually invoke the liminal spaces feeling.
- coldtea 4mo agobecause it's the lack of any aesthetics
- floatingatoll 4mo agoYears and years ago, I took a photo set of the Santa Cruz boardwalk and all of its beautifully painted buildings and rides, in the middle of January when it was completely and utterly devoid of people. I think I encountered one person the entire visit. I was thrilled because it let me add a second album to my collection of “places that are gorgeous and deserve photographs taken of them without all those annoying people in the way”, and I celebrated the reactions from people. Which were, more or less, that is was incredibly weird to see it portrayed in perfectly normal lighting and color and tone, but missing the one thing that everyone takes for granted: passersby. Anyways, I reawoke this old dead account (I have since changed names everywhere, here too) so I can link the album and talk about it. Not because I care about appreciation of my photos, but because as an early adopter of the trend, I found it was possible to create the eeriness of today’s ’liminal spaces’ without the ‘lifeless’ characteristics of the Backrooms, House of Leaves, an so on. It’s a lot easier to create that feeling with decay, with monotonality, with cookie-cutter cubicle mazes; and, the theory tends to connect with people more readily as plausible if you include ‘rotted by time and age’ to justify the emptiness as Horizon Zero Dawn and Last of Is both lovingly demonstrated. But at the core of all of this modern liminal, is portraying human-dense spaces as human-zero, and then confronting the eternal question that haunts humanity: “What happens in the dark forest when no humans are observing?” Whether it’s a cubicle maze or a carnival ride, as the world grows more and more crowded and lonely, it’s no wonder that we want to spy on our busiest spaces after we’ve all gone home for the day. What do they get up to? Where did all the people go? Is this merely a painting of a screaming person on a wall, or is this space empty because they were consumed? https://www.flickr.com/photos/floatingatoll/albums/72157632862368559/ https://www.flickr.com/photos/floatingatoll/albums/721576328...
- cwp 4mo agoHe lost me at "our particular moment of dystopian late capitalism."
- hjkl0 4mo ago[dead]