The Symbolism of Floral Shoppe
MACINTOSH PLUS - リサフランク420 / 現代のコンピュー
One of the most well known songs associated with vaporwave is MACINTOSH PLUS - リサフランク420 / 現代のコンピュー in the album Floral Shoppe. On the surface, it is nothing more than a slowed down version of a Diana Ross song. The song itself is certainly not that exemplary, but combined with its music video, it takes on new meaning.
The video, like the song, does not include any original material, only a curated display of early computer animations, so it is difficult to determine how much of the symbolism is purposeful and how much is coincidental. As a work of art expressing the spirit of our age, it communicates its message regardless of the author’s intent. For example, although the original music has the line “it’s all in your hands,” most people, myself included, hear it in the video as “it’s all in your head,” and the pairing of visuals and emphasis on this line seems to confirm that, even if the line “it’s all in your head” is all in your head, the fact that it seems to be otherwise is significant.
The video begins with a dreamlike and wonderfully utopian melody. The camera slowly zooms out as a structure unfolds itself. The objects within the structure are perfectly geometric, and surrounded by a hemisphere divided into lines of longitude and latitude. Here is the first introduction to enlightenment utopia of mathematical perfection. The lines of latitude and longitude evoke the age of exploration in which the world was systematically conquered by means of precise regular measurements. The focus of simple geometric shapes has a dual explanation. First, such shapes were easily produced by early computer graphics. It is not a coincidence that mathematically perfect shapes precede more organic ones in the evolution of the computer, because they are closer to the essence of modern technology. The metaphysical outlook of modernity is built into the very framework of its computers. It is analytical and precise but lacks a mystical, organic dimension. It lacks nuance and reeks of the uncanny, of artificiality. Nevertheless it has its own kind of spirituality, one that’s presence persists throughout the video.
The camera continues to zoom out, revealing that the utopian construct of the opening is contained within a computer screen. The computer is a virtual world, a model world which does not represent true reality, but a mathematically simplified fantasy. Within these models, reality becomes confused with fiction. The model world of this reality is revealed to itself be part of another simulation at another level of reality when the camera zooms out even further to reveal that the first computer was itself within an additional computer. The whole opening scene serves to establish that the geometrically perfect models have a fractal-like nature. In this world there is only the shadows of Plato’s cave. There is no reality, only recurring levels of images. The reality of this world is form without substance, phantasm without being. Each level of image parodies the level above it, a symbolic representation presented on a screen, however every representation is equally artificial. There is no idea within this world that the representations have or even ought to have originals or that there is anything beyond the screens and their representations.
In the next scene, the camera revolves around within the utopian construct. We see that the floor of this world is a black and white checkerboard. The geometricism of freemasonry, binary grids of black and white alternating endlessly and defined by their contrast, precise and dialectical, like the software that composes this world.
A humanoid, robotic figure is seen flying throughout the construct. It has no pretension of being human or even anything close to human. It seems to perform its operations with mechanical precision, as if its face were a mere façade concealing an internal vacuity. As the cone-like being flies outside of a building reminiscent of a neoclassical dome, it wags its head side to side in an unnatural and bizarre manner, further signaling its inhumanity to us. Finally, we return back to the computer, reminding us that all of the events of the preceding scene took place in an iterative simulation. The face of the being phases before the camera, reminding us that it is not limited to physicality within the simulation.
At this point, the scene changes and the lyrics of the song begin. “It’s your move,” say the lyrics. “I’ve made up my mind. Time is running out.” It tells us that we need to choose, but what kind of choice could we possibly make in this world that is so crucial? The time is running out for what? The video shows an image of a statue of a head. Again, the head is a representation which does not seem to be representing anything. This is certainly not a statue of a real person. It is a statue of an ideal, geometric man. “I’ve made up my mind” implies that this stone head is supposed to be the mind of a man. This is the materialist model world in which all things, mental and spiritual, are reduced to their physical manifestation, just as all objects within Plato’s cave are reduced to their shadows. The mind of man is “made up.” It cannot be changed. It is set in stone and immobile, deeply imbedded within the model world of physicality.
When the lyrics say that “time is running out” the video cuts to an image of a man running around a clock. No matter how far he runs, he returns to where he began. Like everything within this world, the very efforts of this marble man to escape to somewhere, if that is his intention at all, are clearly mechanical and futile. His movement is perfect and fluid, and yet it is meaningless. It carries him in circles, just as the arms of the clock revolve endlessly. Even as he turns, he continues to run in place, going nowhere. Pictured on the clock appears to be an image of clouds, perhaps representing the heavens, but the heavens are hazy and misty, not clear. The clock appears to be accelerating down some kind of tunnel or into some kind of void. This whole scene can also be understood as a visual metaphor. The man is literally time, who is literally running outward. Again, however, it is unclear where he is running and why. The nostalgia created by the melody certainly implies something is dying or passing away. This is the end of the world brought about by modernity. By the time it has ended the original world cannot be identified, only the hazy dream running and running but going nowhere.
The video returns to the spinning statue of a head, and the narrator says, “Make a move, or we can’t go on.” We are again prompted to ask, “what are we going on to, what is this progress for?” recalling the statue running in place and going nowhere. Sure we have to act, but what can acts accomplish since we don’t know where we are or where we are going?
At this point the lyrics say, “do you understand? It’s all in your head.” Simultaneously, the camera zooms onto the head, emphasizing the fact that this problem we are facing, the whole world we are experiencing, is contained within the mind of the individual, a constructed model world of the mind. The lyrics cut off saying “it’s your” but do not finish, as the scene abruptly shifts again.
The next scene is a room by an ocean. The room is filled with various objects, resembling a house from the early 1900s. First we see a collage of artificial plants, the mathematical emulating the organic. We are then introduced to a toy penguin with a bow tie. The penguin has a wind up key turning on its back, however as the penguin moves throughout the house, it never loses energy. It has infinite energy and continues to turn and move without using up its potential. The penguin looks out the window and a toy blimp flies in with a continually spinning propeller. It produces balls which fall out of it and perpetually bounce on the ground, but then disappear as the penguin looks at them. The penguin then moves over to a piano. As he looks at the piano, the piano begins to automatically play without anyone acting upon it. Again, he walks over to some flowers. As he looks at them, they transform into a perpetual motion machine with a ball that continually falls. Finally, the penguin moves to a television. He pokes it with his beak and it creates a display that continually moves downards. All of the objects the penguin encounters share in common that they behave in irregular, physics defying ways when he is near them. The perpetual motion machine, like the penguin, continues to move without using energy. The penguin sees a vision of said machine which disappears when he looks away. It does not actually exist. This is the desire of the Faustian Spirit to achieve perpetual motion toward the infinite. By means of simulation and automation, this vision of infinite motion becomes reality, as seen with the television at the end of the scene, which is just as magical as the automatically playing piano or precariously levitating blimp.
The next scene is also about motion. This time, as a statue running through Roman ruins with his feet burning. A pillar is shown being reconstructed from its broken parts. Modernity seeks to revive the spirit of antiquity by reestablishing knowledge based in rationality and the perfection of form found in classical philosophy and art. The coming to life of the classical statue is the resurrection of the spirit of antiquity. The fire at its feet is the drive for eternal motion that continually burns in the spirit of modern man, even to the extent that he can do the impossible, such as walking on water or achieving perpetual motion. During this scene the lyric, “don’t say I know,” repeats over and over, alluding to the saying of Socrates that, “I know that I know nothing.” The resurrection of skepticism in the enlightenment is associated with the rejection of all forms of trust in objective reality and any form of knowledge that isn’t rigidly precise, collapsing all of reality into the realm of relativism as revelation, tradition, and innate knowledge are rejected as sources of truth. But the man of this new enlightenment is not truly alive. He moves but his motion is still mechanical and vacuous, like the automatons in the previous scenes.
Continuing on the theme of relativism, in the next scene we see a glimpse of an Escherian structure in which there is not clearly definable orientation. There are stairs going up, down, left, right, forward, and backwards. We can no longer say that we know, since there is no more truth, no more up and down or heaven and earth, but only many different ups and downs which are relative to one another. The scene cuts to a sequence showing a variety of toys. Many exhibiting perpetual, repetitive motion, including a ball that bounces continually downward, two birds that continually peck at water before bouncing back up, and a being with two umbrellas that continually spins around. The lyrics stop repeating “don’t say I know” and instead say, “You say you know we shouldn't, you keep holding out, but you don't let go.” Perhaps this refers to the seductive power of the infinite fantasy of amusement, technology, and power represented by the abundance of automatic toys. We know that modernity is almost certainly heading in a negative direction, nevertheless we cannot let go or truly escape its temptations.
We return to the Escherian staircases, this time populated with residents who walk up and down them in different directions. The lyrics say, “I’m giving up on trying. Just sell your things if you ain’t buying.” The lyrics simultaneously allude to the nihilism inherent and this age and also consumerism. If you’re not buying, your selling. If you won’t commit yourself to the illusion, cash out of it and leave. However, there doesn’t seem to be anywhere to leave to and the only reason to sell is if you want to buy something else again. You’re just walking in circles up and down stairs that lead nowhere.
The second round of this lyric is paired with what looks like a museum with modern art on its walls, again alluding to the lack of meaning or direction in modernity. Then, the lyrics “Your move. I’ve made up my mind. Time is running out,” repeat again. This time accompanied by a surreal depiction of pendulums with eyes ticking in an alien landscape that flows like a river, the direction of time flowing onward in an undefined direction while relativistic observers look on. Traveling past these pendulums, we arrive at a field of gray hills that sprawl endlessly and monotonously onwards.
The scene finally transitions to a set of glowing rings, which looks like a basic model of an atom against the background of the cosmos. Electrons orbit around the model atom. The words, “it’s all in your head” echo onward over and over as the model of the atom peels away to reveal illustrations on paper of important historical scientists on the ring of the atom. The model of the atom is “all in your head,” composed of the mental abstractions and models constructed by these scientists. The scientists themselves are just illustrations. The original men who created these ideas and simplifications do not exist, only the mythology of them produced by modern capitalism. There are only symbols referring to great scientists in the vast narrative of science and history. All the paper illustrations of scientists bow down and worship the image of Newton, the forefather of all modern science and the mathematically precise models which govern the modern world and enslave the modern mind in their totalizing and lifeless caricature of reality. All of these figures fall into a wormhole like structure made up of a triangular tessellation. The equation for the force of gravity floats by, as well as numerous papers. The so-called physical world of science is, far from being grounded in the imminent and tangible world of direct experience, a great abstraction composed, ironically, of the ideas of men, expressed mathematically with complex and esoteric theories and symbols that refer endlessly to other symbols and models published in endless papers. Thus, materialism is revealed to be a kind of idealism in disguise. It is far removed from genuine life. It is a artificial caricature of reality, a fraudulent imitation that models the substance of real life in terms of abstract models that distort and twist the world into something that can be described with an equation that only an initiate to their intricacies can comprehend. Mathematics is not the language of the universe but it is the language of our artificial simulacrum of the universe. As the lyric says, “it’s all in your head.”
At the end of the wormhole we see the most realistic portion of the video. The melody has broken down into a continuous distorted loop as we approach closer to the essence of the spirit of modernity. A galaxy is pictured, but we are reminded as we fly through it that it is still just a graphical projection, the model world of the disciples of Newton governed by his equation. It is not real, but of all the things in the simulated world it most of all puts on the disguise of being most realistic. This is the most insidious part of the simulation because it maintains the illusion that obscures and underlies all other aspects of the simulation. The universe in this model is centerless and boundless. We never see Earth, only some star, which may be the sun, that the camera zooms in to. Inside the simulation there is no origin, just endless fractal structures expanding identically in all directions without purpose or rule, inhuman and cold.