Thoughts on Media, Aesthetics and Products

Poolcore Best Core

I’m weak to aesthetics centering around water. Some of my happiest childhood memories were in waterparks. Not the ocean, though. I had been to the ocean once and I didn’t like it. But pools, hot tubs, chlorinated and free of living things besides myself, I loved. The smell of chlorine, the blue, the plastic. I used to bite pool toys for the texture. This gif has that same texture.

I want to lie down in that river and let it carry me like a trout. I want to inhale so much chlorine that it kills all the strains of COVID that are probably in my body. I want to climb the fake trees and promptly fall on my ass because they look really slick. I would waste hours here, and I’m twenty-three. I wonder if you can climb on those clouds? I never was much of a climber. Or swimmer. Or runner. Or anything that involves moving. But those clouds are my personal rodeo horse.

I can see my stepmother stepping in, foot by foot, then starting Decor Discourse with my father. How tacky! I’d tune out, touch the rocks, avert my eyes from the statue (temptations of St. Anthony), and giggle about the warmth and fizz on my toes. This has the same potency as the previous. They’re both facsimiles of outdoor life, like that one Cold War-era bunker. The claustrophobia of the tub’s position against the wall and the recreation of Venice gives it cursed energy that the other two scenes in this post don’t have.

I’ve never been to a YMCA, but this makes me feel like I’m missing out. This was the first image that made me sit up and pay attention to this liminal space trend. I’d watch other kids spin those wheels (too scared to mess with things myself) and wade through the water, possibly on hands and knees, like a lizard. I’d shut my eyes against the dribble of water from the mushroom thing, then rub them dry once I climbed out.

These scenes are more comforting to me, but they have that edge of unease and nostalgic aura that makes them my favorite!

To All the Phones I’ve Loved* Before

*Or tolerated. I got my first phone fairly late, in the summer of 2012. It was suggested that I have one in case of emergencies since I’d be going to middle school soon. I haven’t been free since.

My beloved. I would force in my earbud jack every day before school and listen to the Cinematic Orchestra’s “Arrival of the Birds” and “Transformation” at the lowest sound quality you could imagine. It’s still my favorite song, even more so that I can actually hear what’s going on. If it fell out of my hands, it would break apart on the tile, and I’d be able to put the batteries back in and attach the two sides of the case together and it would be as good as new. I still have pictures of my old cat Onyx on it. I left it at my father’s friend’s house, and he just bought me a new one instead of going to get it.

Also my beloved. The release date means I must’ve still had that Extravert on the first day of high school, which is very funny. I remember the relief of now having a touchscreen, like all the other kids. This docile creature served me all throughout high school and beyond, until 2019. I didn’t believe it until I checked my Google Photos and saw pictures taken with it that year, making it the longest-lasting device I’ve had so far. Even the geometric lock screen fills me with nostalgia. I had this phone when the iPhone 10 was making its debut and being fawned over by my friends from my video class. I think that was my anti-Apple awakening.

We switched over to Visible Mobile (a subset of Verizon) in 2019, probably around October. The R2 is free if you switch, and you can definitely tell. It was fast and easy to set up, but the battery lasted two years, the latter six months of which was spent trying to keep my phone above 30% so it wouldn’t shut down. Dishonorable mention to my stepmother’s R2, which I had to switch over to and lasted even less time.

My current phone is the cheapest available that would accept Visible’s new 5G plan. It has an unfortunate Android 11-era bug, that being that it restarts whenever it feels like it, sometimes in the middle of phone calls with my therapist. Oh, and it didn’t come with a charging cable or block. But other than that, no complaints. I hope it lasts.

The Flavors of Nostalgia

I used to collect Lip Smackers, more broadly lip balms. I got up to 76 in 7th grade, and took my bag of them with me to class (I was really, really cool). My holy grail was Strawberry Grapefruit.

It baffles me that this flavor was so unpopular as to leave little trace. It was sour, strong, sweet, but not too sweet. I would wear it now. It leaned into the grapefruit smell and away from the strawberry. The texture was silky, clear, and youthful enough for me to wear as an eleven-year-old without feeling like there was goop on my lips. I remember packing it in a tiny bag and smelling it on my first-ever flight to my grandfather’s house, listening to Above and Beyond’s Sirens of the Sea album. It smelled like citric acid. Like Sour Patch and Toxic Waste and skin peeling off my tongue. Like the “margaritas” my cousins and I used to make at our grandmother’s in-house bar, which consisted of lime juice and sugar in fancy glasses. Maybe I should get myself checked for Vitamin C deficiency.

A Short Analysis of Some Liminal Art

You probably know Gabrielle Traversat from this photo.

Or this one.

I wanted to show you more of her work, though you can find all of it on her art blog, @gbrltvrst on Tumblr, or @spectrometrie on Instagram for people that prefer normal social media. Though she makes art more inspired by Old Web aesthetics as well, I'm focusing on her more liminal-space-y art today.

These images make me shiver. The boxy houses, spindly water tower, and exaggerated topography are all common in her work. The ground looks like a PS2 texture, also common. If you touched it, it'd be flat. It's a puppet show.

Obviously, liminality is subjective. But I'd like to throw up some ideas as to why I think her art is so popular. Why it "works." Almost like a written video essay that's three minutes long.

These pieces borrow from Traversat's own photography as well as Google Maps, with Photoshop being used. The elements are real, or as real as the camera can capture. That realism is important, so the image has something to deviate from. In the first image, the houses are blurrier than the hills they sit on. In the fourth, they're sharper. These real elements are placed incongruently. It's real, we know it is, but it doesn't 'fit' with what's around it.

This brings me to lighting. More specifically, the lack of strong shadows. Shadows tell you about form. A lack of shadows means a lack of information--think of an overexposed shot of the face. All you see are irises and nostrils, a line of the mouth. These images mimic that effect, not by blowing out the values in one direction, but by pushing them all towards the middle.

Not only are the shadows spare, but they don't match the environment, much like the quality. In the first image, there's no shadows at all. In the second, there's a shadow beneath the ledge on the house, implying light coming from above. However, no shadow is cast from the house onto the grass, and neither the green nor brown grass get darker as they turn away from the light source. In the third image, there's a short cast shadow, but it stops at the grass. Certain planes that should be lit--the side of the house on the far right of the image--are not.

The fifth image is an exception. I believe this gives it a different feel than the others. An eerie hopefulness. The EXIT sign, grass texture, and painted cloud panel missing from the wall imply that this light, too, may be a trick.

The lack of people, signs, and captions all work together to give you zero useful information. The third and fourth images read, "suburbs," and "neighborhood," respectively. The fifth image reads, "this one's not ready yet." Also, could be my bad eyesight, but the EXIT sign is difficult to read. The sixth has a sign that says BIOHAZARD: AUTHORIZED PERSONNEL ONLY. These words and signs gesture at the gap between what these images are supposed to look like versus what's presented. The EXIT sign is in a place that looks like the outside but isn't at all. The "neighborhood" has three houses, each a continent apart from the other, with no roads or paths between. The "suburbs" are a maze. These bits we're given pull double duty by making the image applicable to more people and confusing the viewer more. The BIOHAZARD sign puts to mind gutted apartments, mutated animals, so the normal-ish landscape is jarring. Why is it a biohazard?

The common thread here is ambiguity. Though some of the individual parts are real, their configurations are not. It makes your brain jump back and forth. There's the suburb where you grew up, the house in the cartoons you watched, the bright green lawns, your most elemental memories. Then there's the distorted proportions, the backwards STOP signs, the sunless sky, to remind you instead of a dream.

Sparkling Water Good

My friend calls it 'angry water.' I consider it to be excited water. Here are all the kinds I've had, ranked in order of enjoyment.

Fourth, San Pellegrino Essenza.

If you, like me, ordered some while trying to get the regular kind, you will find nothing but bitter disappointment. Even if you measure your expectations, there's no way around the fact it tastes like uncoated hydroxyzine. Like tonic water. If you like that, good for you, but I don't.

Third, bubly.

I never understood how my father could taste hard and soft water. I had been spoiled by hard water my whole life. How could water taste slimy? Weak? I get it now. Bubly doesn't really fizz, it trembles. You will wonder if it's gone flat. It hasn't.

Second, Kroger.

I have a can right next to me as I write. It sends my bowels into a tizzy, but it's lovely in the mouth. The flavor isn't much to write home about, but that's never the case with sparkling water.

First, LaCroix.

Meme on it all you want, I know the truth. Perfect level of fizz, adequate amount of flavor, pretty can (I'm an aesthetics person). I have no idea where the "fruit in the next room" thing came from--if I wanted strong flavor, I'd go for soda. Or the Essenza. This doesn't ask too much of me, and in turn relieves my dehydration headache and makes my tongue feel funny. What more could you want?