Draft (finished)

Zeit·geist


–noun German.


The spirit of the time; general trend of thought or feeling characteristic of a particular period of time.

You may have heard of this term before, mentioned around fashion. The way it applies heavily to this area is as fashion, a term to describe a trend in aesthetic or lifestyle choices, only manages to change it’s trends via the zeitgeist - a force created by a hive-mind styled form of communication from many forms of media, often web 2.0 (like blogs and image-hosting sites were the content is classed as ‘we-media’).

The current zeitgeist, or, ‘spirit of the times’ we’re going through right now, is a transition from revamped visual revivals from the 1980’s, to the 1990’s. We can see this, as our recent craze for all things 80’s between 2004 and 2009 has begun to fade - instead of all underground imagery such as album art work, video and graphic design using imagery inspired by the likes of Miami Vice, Tron and Ferris Beuller’s Day Off, they’ve started moving on to more 1990’s based aesthetics, focusing more on popular visuals from the time such as Terminator 2, Jurassic Park and Back to the Future 3.

A good example would be the ‘off-the-radar’ craze of remixing films for music videos, as first seen in Ratatat’s video for their song ‘Mirando’, ‘mashing’ up footage from Predator to a tribal beat. Video mashing is an often illegal form of video art created by hijacking copyright video of youtube and editing it to ones likes. After this video, a new scene was introduced, different to the commercial craze of geometric visuals and neon lit text e.g. Daft Punk’s stage imagery and M.I.A.’s music videos, that instead takes on far more organic forms, such as African patterns and tropical wildlife - this seems like an ironic take on childhood Disney films such The Lion King and Tarzan. It could however be more accurately a depiction on hip hop imagery from the time such as Afrika Bambaata’s or A Tribe Called Quest’s. This transformation in our present zeitgeist is a very strange thing to try and bring across in a literary from, but one the best examples around is Douster’s music video for his track ‘Triassic’ the epitome of this afro/dinosaur imagery. Or the increasing popularity of Rainbow Arabia, an afro-beat/dub collective that are really reviving the spirit found in a lot of Leftfield songs (circa ’95) via a lot of African inspired vocals or instruments. They re-utilize beats and breaks that have since become unpopular in the mainstream too, usually found in old acid-house and rave tracks, for example, the often sampled James Brown breaks.

The transition in music is definitely showing, most clearly in fact.
About 3 years ago, within underground electronic music, the favored tempo was around 120 beats per minute, giving the sound a very typically 1980’s ‘whoompf’ to the drumming that really works well on the dance-floor, this is especially visible with the clubbers drug of choice at the time which was speed and ecstasy. In the past 2 years, the tempo has been put up to a choppier and punchier speed reminiscent more of Prodigy’s early material at around 140 BPM, almost reviving the first decade of amphetamines with the now (il)legal mephedrone which is stirring even more controversy due to it’s unknown side-effects. It seems like an entirely modern take on acid-house culture.
This change in speed has been mainly introduced by the likes of L-VIS 1990 aka James Connolly and Sinden aka Graeme Sinden, pioneers of the new, ‘hyperbass’ genre, inspired heavily by early breakbeat, D’n’B and ironically, bad American dance music. The sound is thick, repetitive and throws the once so popular Korg synth out the window. Other artists catching on to the phenomena are Herve, Switch and BokBok.

When I try to picture the blend of 80’s and 90’s sound, hyperbass’ audio features are a clean balance:

Drum loops (1990’s) - Often samples, the reuse of hip hop or rave drum loops is definitely back, mainly for nostalgia but also for the irony (which will soon become the norm).

Instruments (1980’s) – Stil l, the use of echoing and droning synths are used in a dark manner, reminding me a lot of Laurie Anderson or Inner City.

Vocals (80’s/90’s crossover) – R’n’B vocals found in both decades are revisited, probably for their great hip hop-to-rave relations (commonly know as ‘hip-house’ at the time). The hip house vocal style can be found in many of Simian Mobile Disco’s ‘Temporary Pleasure’ album, released mid 2009.

Here’s the tricky part though. How on earth would one predict what the next spirit of the times will be? How would somebody manage to ‘forecast’ whats coming up? If we carry on in a relative way, what you read below could well be an accurate enough depiction…

The ‘Formula’ of a zeitgeist:
Right now, our formula seems to have us taking visual and/or lifestyle aspects from approximately 15 years ago. Meaning, around 2004, we were bringing back aspects found in ‘84 to ‘89 – as we’ve progressed 6 years (until the present day) so had the retro styles we were going crazy for. But, along the line we’ve moved into the next decade – meaning exactly 15 years ago, we were in ’95, the years of Kindergarten Cop, acid-wash jeans and The Spice Girl’s gaudiness.
Remember this though, the pattern allows for movement between the 15 year window, so you don’t have to precisely move on in time, instead, you can take on a post-modern approach and blend aesthetic values together in whichever way you feel is affective.

When you understand this so-called formula of the zeitgeist, you’ll have the ability to predict what could possibly come next. Here are a list of predictions:

A retro revisiting of the millennium hysteria that built up in everyone. What I mean is that at the turn of the century, people were getting ready for ‘the future’ – nylon and other technological textiles became massive, music from rave to rock was diversifying and fusing with other genres, as well as TV and film themes really beginning to push the boundaries of regular viewing. This was all in effort of feeling new, and in about 3 more years I think we’ll all be trying to replicate that imagery…

The return of scallyism, this time however, for the middle-class. It sounds horrendous but I truly think this will happen as with the 90’s came casual sportswear, surely somebody will bring that back to life? In fact, sport imagery already is beginning to show it’s face – New Power Studio is probably the first sportswear company to disregard the ‘form follows function’ rule with exercise wear and flip it round completely.

Grunge will most definitely show it’s greasy fringe again. I really do think the droop-group aesthetic will capture all of us once more, then leading us on to it’s more evolved and refined goth form. This look will definitely have a huge impact on film, mainly in the areas of cinematography – bleak, bland, monochromatic and grainy footage will prevail. People will definitely begin ironically using DV handi-cams again for that extra scrappy look – last time grunge and goth culture wasn’t for the mainstream. Now it’s been and gone. More people will accept it into the mainstream again, knowing it better than before and being able to fall back on previous imagery – you wouldn’t be able to do that when a new movement starts as it’s a fresh thing without much inspirational imagery for you to utilize. So this way, commercial directors will be more comfortable with grunge aesthetics.

Here are other brief possibilities:

Ironic Anime, Pokemon ripoffs – not just for kids I’d like to add.

The reintroduction of pirate-look filming e.g. Chris Cunningham trademark 90’s look,
where the film is played off a TV screen and refilmed.

PS2 games will eventually become retro - It wont be surprising when FIFA’99 takes Sonic or Street Fighter’s place in popular imagery (going with the upcoming scallie/hooligan look).

Remember the Y2K bug? Well with the predictions for 2012, expect to see some more Armageddon raves and colossal amounts of fresh iconography.