Deleted member 2040
I've decided to make a high effort post this time for various reasons about something which I am loathe to, but out of which emerges a new found love.
Malls.
Mallsoft
That's the stuff I do like.
So, having spent much too much time in malls a child, I've developed an unhealthy aversion to them. Naturally mallsoft was a genre I avoided to forget all the hundreds of hours spent suffering in those islands of limbo.
But then came a comment from some users about mallsoft, and naturally my interest sparked, but after listening to this trenchant album, my favorite Mallsoft and arguably the first and perhaps best in the genre, I delved into myself and looked this old suffering in it's featureless face and decided it's time for us to acknowledge this subgenre and embrace it as a necessary champion in the greater Vaporwave locus.
For a little more on malls and less my reaction to them.
The pioneering Austrian architect Victor Gruen is credited as the grandfather of mall architect and design. His vision as an architect was to prioritize people over cars in urban and suburban areas, and designed the first outdoor mall in the USA, the Kalamazoo Mall.
Europe in the early 1900's was a time when major changes were occurring on all levels of human experience. With the permeation of modernism and ideas of a new modernity, automobiles were the rave and the way to get around major metropolitan areas in Europe was to say not to carriages and yes to cars. But not everyone could afford to have a car at their disposal. So Gruen though of creating community areas in the cultural backwaters of suburbia in US, as a hope to lure people from their cars and into contact with one another. Malls would indeed be a place for shopping, but also offered food, relaxation, and green space.
In his original ideations, malls would be a connection between residential and commercial areas, and would include libraries, doctor's offices and other public spaces. The idea of commerce was not altogether discarded in designing the malls. Before he began designing malls, Gruen worked on designing retail shops and storefronts in New York City —prim, modern, glass encased facades that renounced the ornate and busy complexity that had preceded them. Designed during the Great Depression when the economy was in dire straits, were intended to lure customers in, keep them there to ultimately coerce them into buying crap.
This successful trap to consumes became known as The Gruen effect, and to this day it still works.
Eventually, Gruen was disown his bastard spawn, expressing deep regret and revulsion for how malls had worsened rather than ameliorated urban sprawl, and how this was not isolated to just the US.
But times change, and the spawn of malls are now being engulfed by the forces of surveillance capitalism and new digital contenders, most noteworthy being Amazon.
Here's a little poem I wrote on malls.
A sea of grey at its feet
Grey Steps of a weed grown ruin
And before the spacious entrance
A flickering neon banner reads,
"Abandon all woe ye who enter,
And enjoy your shopper stay..."
Though the rest of the text is cracked
Rent and disfigured by the shadowy hand of fugitive time,
Crackling music from no apparent source
Becks us in with a disembodied finger
And maddening smile
Into this wonderous and magical world
of the Mall.
This mausoleum of time
Where the deepest desires
Are just a swipe away
Always behind a smudged display
Where the grimacing workers
Ground to a ghost-like existence
Watch as the few wanderers pass them by
Following the echoes of the siren song
Echoing in the static spaces,
The music mixing with the bite of stale fried food
The dead groan of shuffling shoes,
The dim haze which bleeds through the cracked skylights
Nourishing the faux tropical plants
The dazed worker waters as he moves past
Roving gangs of guttersnipes
Who run a racket behind the lopsided gates
Of the bankrupt mattress store
Where the discounted dreams
Enjoyed by the smiling people in the ads
Rest forever behind shutters,
Those dreams the imaginary smiling people in the ads enjoy
Seem lost in a bliss forever frozen in
That grey
Place,
Frozen
like the looped song from the speakers
inside
that empty
grey
mall
where
woe
has abandoned its wares,
And liquidated
it
to
Emptiness,
the keeper of dreams.
----
Please also share your favorite mallsoft albums or your relationship with malls.
Malls.
Mallsoft
That's the stuff I do like.
So, having spent much too much time in malls a child, I've developed an unhealthy aversion to them. Naturally mallsoft was a genre I avoided to forget all the hundreds of hours spent suffering in those islands of limbo.
But then came a comment from some users about mallsoft, and naturally my interest sparked, but after listening to this trenchant album, my favorite Mallsoft and arguably the first and perhaps best in the genre, I delved into myself and looked this old suffering in it's featureless face and decided it's time for us to acknowledge this subgenre and embrace it as a necessary champion in the greater Vaporwave locus.
For a little more on malls and less my reaction to them.
The pioneering Austrian architect Victor Gruen is credited as the grandfather of mall architect and design. His vision as an architect was to prioritize people over cars in urban and suburban areas, and designed the first outdoor mall in the USA, the Kalamazoo Mall.
Europe in the early 1900's was a time when major changes were occurring on all levels of human experience. With the permeation of modernism and ideas of a new modernity, automobiles were the rave and the way to get around major metropolitan areas in Europe was to say not to carriages and yes to cars. But not everyone could afford to have a car at their disposal. So Gruen though of creating community areas in the cultural backwaters of suburbia in US, as a hope to lure people from their cars and into contact with one another. Malls would indeed be a place for shopping, but also offered food, relaxation, and green space.
In his original ideations, malls would be a connection between residential and commercial areas, and would include libraries, doctor's offices and other public spaces. The idea of commerce was not altogether discarded in designing the malls. Before he began designing malls, Gruen worked on designing retail shops and storefronts in New York City —prim, modern, glass encased facades that renounced the ornate and busy complexity that had preceded them. Designed during the Great Depression when the economy was in dire straits, were intended to lure customers in, keep them there to ultimately coerce them into buying crap.
This successful trap to consumes became known as The Gruen effect, and to this day it still works.
Eventually, Gruen was disown his bastard spawn, expressing deep regret and revulsion for how malls had worsened rather than ameliorated urban sprawl, and how this was not isolated to just the US.
But times change, and the spawn of malls are now being engulfed by the forces of surveillance capitalism and new digital contenders, most noteworthy being Amazon.
Here's a little poem I wrote on malls.
A sea of grey at its feet
Grey Steps of a weed grown ruin
And before the spacious entrance
A flickering neon banner reads,
"Abandon all woe ye who enter,
And enjoy your shopper stay..."
Though the rest of the text is cracked
Rent and disfigured by the shadowy hand of fugitive time,
Crackling music from no apparent source
Becks us in with a disembodied finger
And maddening smile
Into this wonderous and magical world
of the Mall.
This mausoleum of time
Where the deepest desires
Are just a swipe away
Always behind a smudged display
Where the grimacing workers
Ground to a ghost-like existence
Watch as the few wanderers pass them by
Following the echoes of the siren song
Echoing in the static spaces,
The music mixing with the bite of stale fried food
The dead groan of shuffling shoes,
The dim haze which bleeds through the cracked skylights
Nourishing the faux tropical plants
The dazed worker waters as he moves past
Roving gangs of guttersnipes
Who run a racket behind the lopsided gates
Of the bankrupt mattress store
Where the discounted dreams
Enjoyed by the smiling people in the ads
Rest forever behind shutters,
Those dreams the imaginary smiling people in the ads enjoy
Seem lost in a bliss forever frozen in
That grey
Place,
Frozen
like the looped song from the speakers
inside
that empty
grey
mall
where
woe
has abandoned its wares,
And liquidated
it
to
Emptiness,
the keeper of dreams.
----
Please also share your favorite mallsoft albums or your relationship with malls.