Aesthetic of the Day: Depthcore / Metalheart / Trendwhore (~1998-2004)
Thought I’d start doing some posts on various aesthetics I’ve been studying since starting my exploration of Y2K four years ago. Metalheart, named for the 2001 book of the same name cataloging the work of Swedish designers Andreas Lindholm and Anders F. Ronnblom, is a visually complex and heavily digital aesthetic popular in the very late 90s and early 2000s. Its precursors include experimental deconstructivist works of designers like Zaha Hadid, the loud and expressive graphics used in rave flyers of the era, and designs by firms ATTIK and Me Company.
The style further developed in online communities like DeviantArt, Customize.org, and Depthcore, becoming more elaborate and complex as time went on. The hallmarks of this aesthetic included intricately-crafted, abstract, chaotic, and dramatic digital compositions, futuristic ‘tech’ interfaces with superfluous type, extensive overlays and effects, short (sometimes cryptic or poetic) phrases, and mainly dark/cyberpunk titles like ‘Deterioration, Injektion, Overdose, Biohazard, Brokenfaith’ to name a few. Since the popularity of this style was concurrent with an era of intensive user customization, it manifested in a variety of forum signatures, wallpapers, UIs, and skins for mp3/media programs.
As the style started to become dominant and over-saturated in these communities, it gained the more derisive title of ‘Trendwhore’.
This look eventually morphed together with the more vector-based, bright-colored and flowery ‘McBling’ aesthetic. Since Metalheart is relatively recent, this transition is pretty well cataloged on archived sites still accessible today.
Recently the style has re-emerged through the work of artists like Virtual Self(Porter Robinson). If you’re further interested, we have both a Facebook group and Discord dedicated to investigating and expanding our understanding of this oft-forgotten aesthetic.
I was playing Rebel Assault on one of these, with an external CD-ROM drive. The first Laptop / Notebook I knew.
1988 - The Toshiba T5200 extends the Toshiba family of portables to the limits of modern PC technology. Performance equivalent to the most powerful desktops combined with true Toshiba portability. The result: an effective 386 in a truly portable package. A number cruncher’s dream.
High-end performance The T5200 gives power users an alternative. Power features start with the Intel 80386 microprocessor running at 20 MHz. A 32 KB cache memory ensures that the microprocessor achieves the highest performance possible. The standard 2 MB RAM can be expanded to 8 MB without using an expansion slot. You can have either a 100 or 40 MB hard disk drive with access times as low as 25 milliseconds. All these features combined with Toshiba portability add up to one thing: effective speed.
Brilliant graphics A special feature of the T5200 is standard VGA graphics. Full VGA resolution can be displayed simultaneously on both the built-in plasma display and an external VGA monitor. On the plasma display, colours are displayed as 16 grey scales. A VGA compatible colour monitor can show the full range of VGA capabilities. And the plasma display can be detached, if needed, to give unimpaired viewing of the external monitor.
