I constantly find myself being very nervous about Going Live; and yet after I’m done I still want to do it again. I think it’s an innate social drive to share things we’re excited about.
From the get-go, I was pretty certain that I wanted to be streaming music, but I hadn’t decided on any specifics. Looking back, I’m not sure when I decided on the theme of VAPORWAVE.
Vaporwave is a microgenre of electronic music and an Internet meme that emerged in the early 2010s.[16] The music typically features a fascination with 1980s and 1990s styles such as elevator music, smooth jazz, R&B, and lounge music[5][8] often sampling or manipulating tracks via chopped and screwed techniques and other effects.[11][5] The subculture surrounding vaporwave is often associated with an ambiguous or satirical take on consumer capitalism and popular culture, and tends to be characterized by a nostalgic or surrealist engagement with the popular entertainment, technology and advertising of previous decades. It also incorporates early Internet imagery, late 1990s web design, glitch art, and cyberpunk tropes in its cover artwork and music videos.[8]
It was unknowingly a great choice in my opinion; with vaporwave also being a very visual subculture with a focus on ＡＥＳＴＨＥＴＩＣＳ, source material was boundless.
My first livestream was my favorite as everything pretty much went according to plan, however the one thing I didn’t account on was getting a copyright strike on one of the 3 songs I had played that night. Additionally after I had gotten the notification minutes after the stream, I realized that I hadn’t hit record either, a real doubly whammy.
The song in particular being ‘ESPRIT 空想 – SUMMER NIGHT’ (linked above). Streaming music also wasn’t particularly easy, especially in that I wanted to have control over which program can be heard and which one’s can’t. I eventually found out some software that allowed me to create a virtual cable input and another to help me route spotify audio to the cable. Funnily enough, in my second livestream, I ended up playing music through Google Chrome which didn’t require any of the aforementioned software. With all this talk of configuration, it once again conjures thoughts of curation. I definitely realized that my preconception of the level of polish I had set on the livestream was self-imposed; and letting go of that made the experience true to it’s intent of sharing content (and released some tension).
The first time I streamed, Winzaw and Cher See commented on my video (thanks yall!)~ The interactivity was nice, though, it was hard to monitor the broadcast and respond to comments at the same time, maybe something that’ll get easier in time. It was especially cool in that they definitely were on the ball with the both of them commenting in the ＶΛＰＯＲＷΛＶΞ aesthetic, so it was fun to see who else was in on the memeing. And speaking of memeing, most of the gifs and videos I used were very tongue in cheek, from an old guy listens to vaporwave video, pictures of donald trump from back in the day, and even a sad frog with a rainy night and Japanese neon signage (japanese text being another aspect of vaporwave).
Overall, it was very enjoyable experience, maybe next time I’ll stream directly to my timeline and see how I do with possibly more people coming into contact with my content (and I’d also be able to link the video livestream outside of the facebook group)
quintessential Vaporwave music + visuals
(I was also thinking of streaming the 1988 Crystal Light National Aerobic Championship, cause just listen to that music 
)
