Fast Forwarding the Past (on Pause): Daniel Lopatin’s Memory Vague and the Hauntological Aesthetic of Vaporwave

Abstract

This article examines the electronic musician Daniel Lopatin’s experimental audiovisual work Memory Vague (2009), in which the artist compiles and manipulates “dead” media in the form of looping audio tracks and forgotten visual artifacts. In repurposing and redistributing lost media, Lopatin’s work engages with the archival methods of the field of media archeology, Derrida’s concept of hauntology, and the concerns of the internet subculture Vaporwave. Lopatin validates dead media beyond its economic commodity value, thus providing an alternative to the streaming era’s inherent drive toward corporate profit.