How liminalism became the defining aesthetic

Liminal does not mean minimal. It means in-between, neither here nor there but in the interstices, transitional.

Dictionary.app in macOS Sequoia defines (with example usage) "liminal" as

  > 1 occupying a position at, or on both sides of, a boundary or threshold: I was in the liminal space between past and present | the paintings in this exhibition are the result of recent investigation into liminal states.

  > 2 relating to a transitional or initial stage of a process: that liminal period when a child is old enough to begin following basic rules but is still too young to do so consistently.

A Nina Simone song comes to mind: everyone's gone... to the moon...

Their description of Frutiger Aero explicitly includes Aqua, both mentioned by name and included visually:

https://www.are.na/consumer-aesthetics-research-institute/fr...

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.

Maybe you wouldn't have that feeling about a beautiful old European town, but I bet some of the people living there would.

Walking around a modern suburban development devoid of people, houses, pets, etc. would be at least unusual in the feeling. The spaces are intentionally designed to put people and their things within obvious boundaries. With the boundaries still there but lacking the things within them it becomes quite a different experience.

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

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

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.

Studies showed better math solving after hypnogagia state: https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC8654287/ https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/sciadv.abj5866

To expand: I strongly recommend Mark Fisher's Capitalist Realism book for a critical read of everything that's wrong with modern capitalism, and how any alternative, however radical it might be, will likely end up become incorporated, and digested, and regurgitated by corporate entities for profit. GenAI is the avatar of this entire process.

Like the early days of ChatGPT when you could fairly easily jailbreak it to ease GPT4 output, I think we're likely to see a whole community of getting whichever of these models leaks to explore the weirder areas of their weights as a kind of internet performance art thing.

I suspect your system being suitably grey market or possibly stolen would be a pre-requisite of such a scene.

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.

>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"

This is ground-up, the opposite of high art. It's even kind of "outsider art".

Ive also purchased and commissioned a few pieces of art. And I find that with actual artists, they ARE very approachable and dont have the Art Critic vibe of 'better than you'.

Its primarily the art literature and critics whom portray this haughty and 'holier than thou' types of one way conversations.

My SO works for a art museum, and they constantly fight with those types as well. When their museum hosts art painting days for artists (primarily plen air or open air painting), the artists use appropriate jargon for painting, but the critics show up and its basically a word-soup for their own vernacular.

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.