warakami
warakami has never given a real name and is not especially interested in the sound half of the genre. "I don't follow the music side of Vaporwave much, but in terms of the art I've always loved the irreverent, subversive Dada-esque Pop Art side of Vaporwave." That framing — vaporwave as a visual movement first — shapes the whole practice: pencil and ink on paper before Photoshop, with Takashi Murakami, Andy Warhol and the streetwear designer Nigo as declared influences.
A former game developer who left the industry for health reasons, warakami built the project on two rules for a daily art blog: post something new every day, and never repost or edit someone else's image.
That discipline produced the SUPERAUDIO series, the satirical "84" brand-logo mashups, and a current run drawn from 1980s recordable-VHS packaging — work that crossed into merchandise via Popkiller, Vapor95 and warakami's own store, 2D Soul, and past 100,000 followers on Tumblr alone. On nostalgia: "a form of warm, comfy escapism and can be a useful coping mechanism", with accuracy to feeling mattering more than accuracy to fact.