y2kaestheticinstitute:

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.