Barcelona-based artist Victor Arce combines the aesthetic of Web 1.0 with Blender-rendered objects and a hazy RBG color palette to create retrofuturistic artworks. Here, he tells Jynann Ong why he isn’t just inspired by the visual language of the early internet era, but also by its social politics, and the culture of sharing and community it bred.
This artist was curated in partnership with Artpoint.
Born, raised and currently residing in Barcelona, artist and educator Victor Arce draws from the aesthetics and philosophies of Web 1.0 throughout his colorful, graphic works. For him, there are two key terms that relate to his creative process: Nostalgia and limitation. Situated at the intersection of Glitch art and Vaporwave, Arce’s practice interrogates the hauntological subcultures where cultural memories are explored through visuals, sounds and references to the past.
Typically, Vaporwave incorporates early internet imagery and 90s web design tropes, as well as references to anime, cyberpunk and grainy music videos. Glitch art, on the other hand, utilizes digital or analog errors to create artwork. “There is an intrinsic message behind my pieces,” Arce explains. “Because they are retrofuturistic Vaporwave, they have a strong anti-capitalist message,” referring to the movement’s unlicensed appropriation of consumerist aesthetics—for instance, interpreting corporate imagery, such as logos, in an absurdist way. “I want them to have a weird, creepy feeling. I can’t quite translate it,” he says in a Catalan lilt, “but it’s like a mood or atmosphere where you don’t fully understand what’s going on.”
During university, he sought out digital experimentation, robotics and, as he aptly summarizes, general “weird stuff.” Having enrolled at the notoriously traditional University of Barcelona where the classical three pathways of painting, sculpture and drawing reigned supreme, Arce found an authentic sense of expression through music, not fine art. Experimenting with sound collages, ambient music and noise, he found solace in playing with combinations that didn’t make sense at first, but with time, felt “not that crazy.”
As he started to release music, Arce also created the album artwork and increasingly enjoyed it more than making music. For him, the appeal of pixel art, Vaporwave, 8-bit music and Chiptune are all similar; their expression is defined by limitation. As a teenager dabbling in Chiptune—a style of electronic music using programmable sound generators, such as vintage arcade machines and synthesizers (or in Arce’s case, video game consoles)—he discovered a small Spanish community who shared the same niche interest, together basking in the nostalgia of the medium.
“The nostalgic element is huge, but my main interest was the limitation,” says Arce, such as, “using four different small sounds from a Gameboy to make a rave.” Through this community, he was exposed to a new underground, online world. He met hackers (both the digital and hardware types), coders, noise artists, pixel art creators and more. He experimented with the glitches and errors caused by retro computing software and video game consoles, celebrating the imperfect bursts of spontaneity rather than viewing them as malfunctions.
Arce’s practice is defined by the community-driven, open source ethics somewhat synonymous with Web 1.0. “The ethics are based on community. Releasing your own files, your secrets, and not gatekeeping them,” says Arce on his contribution to the anti-capitalist stance of Vaporwave. Before the days of individualistic social media, fueled by tech giants’ economy of attention, Web 1.0 saw “more people willing to share their creative processes, more willing to build communities.” In response, Arce seeks out an egalitarian community through digital mediums. He releases his visual work under a Creative Commons license, allowing anyone to use it for non-commercial purposes. For Arce, this creative sharing allows people “to get inspired in a more direct way.”
“I think everyone benefits from seeing how art is made,” Arce says. It’s like being able to see all the different layers that compose a complete painting. “I love open source because it helps a lot with learning,” he adds. Crossing the creative disciplines of music and visual art, Arce understands his work as “interdisciplinary remixing.”
Arce works intuitively, jumping straight into Photoshop, After Effects and Blender until the uncanny Lynchian atmospheres in his mind’s eye materialize. “I do what feels right in the moment. I just improvise,” he says. He doesn’t sketch, instead following traces of his imagination to intuit a piece. Often bringing open source 3D models or objects into the scene to complete his vision, he folds the community into work. There are common aesthetics and retro references Arce likes to pursue. That being said, he consistently tries to inject something unexpected onto the canvas. “I just go with the flow and try to make something more challenging each time,” he says. “To me, the process is a mystery.”