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Eric Wycoff Rogers

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Writings

Featured
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Oct 31, 2024
What is agency and where does it come from?
Oct 31, 2024
Oct 31, 2024
The Metaverse Must Be a Pluriverse
Dec 24, 2021
The Metaverse Must Be a Pluriverse
Dec 24, 2021
Dec 24, 2021
Screen+Shot+2021-01-09+at+6.00.40+PM.jpg
Jan 9, 2021
In the Aftermath of the Storming of the Capitol
Jan 9, 2021
Jan 9, 2021
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Dec 13, 2020
Why I Don't Post Slogans (reflections on declarative politics)
Dec 13, 2020
Dec 13, 2020
WORK_folder.png
Nov 14, 2020
Prompt for Imagining the Post-Work City
Nov 14, 2020
Nov 14, 2020
emotional ecology-01.jpg
Sep 18, 2020
The Dimensions of Social and Emotional Ecology
Sep 18, 2020
Sep 18, 2020
personal political?-01.jpg
Sep 13, 2020
The Personal is Political . . . Right? (Balancing Personal and Planetary Thrival)
Sep 13, 2020
Sep 13, 2020
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Sep 11, 2020
Why Your Love of Nature May be Destroying Nature
Sep 11, 2020
Sep 11, 2020
Left-realism.png
Sep 9, 2020
Left Criminological "Ultra-Realism" and Defunding the Police
Sep 9, 2020
Sep 9, 2020
lens-systemic-oppression-1024x627.png
Jun 14, 2020
Oppression vs. Discrimination: Why You Can Have Racism Without Racists
Jun 14, 2020
Jun 14, 2020
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Jun 11, 2020
The Meaning of Autonomous Zones
Jun 11, 2020
Jun 11, 2020
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Jun 7, 2020
Why Is Academic Language So Inaccessible?
Jun 7, 2020
Jun 7, 2020
Covidiots and Looters (or, nostalgia for "good citizens")
May 31, 2020
Covidiots and Looters (or, nostalgia for "good citizens")
May 31, 2020
May 31, 2020
Consent-01.jpg
May 13, 2020
Consent and Beyond
May 13, 2020
May 13, 2020
Radical Professionalism-01.jpg
Apr 27, 2020
What Is Radical Professionalism, and Can It Help Us Build Post-capitalism?
Apr 27, 2020
Apr 27, 2020
DISTROID-01.jpg
Mar 19, 2020
The Meaning of DISTROID
Mar 19, 2020
Mar 19, 2020
Feb 13, 2020
Are Shitty Men Really the Problem?
Feb 13, 2020
Feb 13, 2020
Nov 25, 2019
"No Scrubs": Deconstructing the WWI "Slacker," Sexual Manipulation and Gendered Power
Nov 25, 2019
Nov 25, 2019
Sep 4, 2019
Social Media and Post-Authenticity
Sep 4, 2019
Sep 4, 2019
May 7, 2019
Becoming-Feminist: Consciousness-Raising and Social Ecology
May 7, 2019
May 7, 2019
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Mar 20, 2019
Assertive Modesty
Mar 20, 2019
Mar 20, 2019
Jul 3, 2018
Situated Postmodernism, or the Cultural Logic of End Times
Jul 3, 2018
Jul 3, 2018
Apr 12, 2018
Notes on Oppression
Apr 12, 2018
Apr 12, 2018
post-work city-01.jpg
Feb 9, 2018
Post-Industrious Society: Imagining the cities of a post-work world
Feb 9, 2018
Feb 9, 2018
Feb 1, 2018
The (classed) Political Economy of Data
Feb 1, 2018
Feb 1, 2018
Jan 13, 2018
Business against Capitalism: production that undermines reproduction
Jan 13, 2018
Jan 13, 2018
Jun 22, 2017
Reflections on (uncritical) Aristocratic Hedonism
Jun 22, 2017
Jun 22, 2017
Mar 4, 2017
Queer(ing) Space
Mar 4, 2017
Mar 4, 2017
Dec 21, 2016
Professional Interests: how professionalism came to dominate common sense
Dec 21, 2016
Dec 21, 2016
Dec 6, 2015
Towards a New Sharing Economy
Dec 6, 2015
Dec 6, 2015
DISTROID-01.jpg

The Meaning of DISTROID

March 19, 2020

DISTROID is a subgenera of electronic music, arising out of an earlier branch of internet-based electronic music called “vaporwave.” Vaporwave takes the comforting noises and imagery of the 1990s and distorts it into a cheap veneer that simultaneously induces nostalgia, makes us aware--by making the interface between the past and present tangible (slowing down, static, record marks and other signals of retrograde reproduction technology)--of the past's ideological nature, and garners our disdain for the unfulfilled promises and abandoned hope of the pre-9/11 era. These elements and evocations (comfort and critique-via-contextualization) are something that the subgenera DISTROID separates out and holds in tension in distinct layers: on the one hand, the sounds and sights of the saccharine, “sugary onslaught” of popular music in 2018 (and this aesthetic, on its own, is accelerated and taken to its extreme by artists under the PC Music label), and on the other, the dark, dreary, tired, echoing mechanical sounds of disarray and degeneration (many of these having been pioneered and disseminated by dubstep and its predecessors).Vaporwave pioneered what might be thought of as an “anonymous subsidiary” production model of music, with digitally-veiled artists producing content under many different monikers, each deliciously named like a 90s product line, mall store, or bogus, patented chemical “technology” featured on a cleaning product (“SPF420;” “バーチャル Paragon ™;” “ECO VIRTUAL;” “R23X;” “waterfront dining;” “Windows 96,” “haircuts for men,” etc.). DISTROID continues to obscure the producer’s identity, but at the same time, it blurs the listener’s identity too. The clashing threads of comfort and critical contextualization are arranged in a way that leaves it unclear whether the creator made it for you, or for some AI observer who will use it as documentary evidence of how human governance and culture failed. DISTROID tracks feature unexpected cuts, often to thick, distant filtered sequences—blips, static, and interruptions. In this sense, DISTROID music sounds as if it is doing the double work of being musical for what’s left of humans, and also transmitting data for machines. It sounds as if data transmission is elbowing its way into the audio stream, reminding us of the saturation of transmissions between machines, as well as of the way in which we ourselves are increasingly hybridizing with machines. It thematizes the experience of little islands of comfort and joy in a dystopian sea of global chaos—a world that is out of our hands, and where people in positions of power run PR campaigns that insist that they are still in control of economic, political and technological processes, when in fact these processes dictate what people (especially the powerful) may do. Underneath the beeps, blips, and metallic file compression filters, DISTROID captures the atmosphere of chirpy advertisements playing in parallel on the gas pumps of an empty gas station; the cheap lighting of the freezer aisle; the endless empty analysis of the 24-hour news cycle; the out-of-order restroom; the narcissism on Instagram. It finds something drearily comfortable in its resignation to these familiar atmospheres. There’s something soothing in seeing the world in its actual form. DISTROID is the music of a world that uses its best technologies for porn and marketing and it is less industrious than distracted—cyborg music for a cyborg society in denial.

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Most Recent

Featured
Oct 31, 2024
What is agency and where does it come from?
Oct 31, 2024
Oct 31, 2024
Dec 24, 2021
The Metaverse Must Be a Pluriverse
Dec 24, 2021
Dec 24, 2021
Jan 9, 2021
In the Aftermath of the Storming of the Capitol
Jan 9, 2021
Jan 9, 2021
Dec 13, 2020
Why I Don't Post Slogans (reflections on declarative politics)
Dec 13, 2020
Dec 13, 2020
Nov 14, 2020
Prompt for Imagining the Post-Work City
Nov 14, 2020
Nov 14, 2020
Sep 18, 2020
The Dimensions of Social and Emotional Ecology
Sep 18, 2020
Sep 18, 2020
Sep 13, 2020
The Personal is Political . . . Right? (Balancing Personal and Planetary Thrival)
Sep 13, 2020
Sep 13, 2020
Sep 11, 2020
Why Your Love of Nature May be Destroying Nature
Sep 11, 2020
Sep 11, 2020
Sep 9, 2020
Left Criminological "Ultra-Realism" and Defunding the Police
Sep 9, 2020
Sep 9, 2020
Jun 14, 2020
Oppression vs. Discrimination: Why You Can Have Racism Without Racists
Jun 14, 2020
Jun 14, 2020