What is the Origin of the Digital Landscape?

[PeachClover]

The digital landscape of palm trees, a sunset/sunrise, and gridded planes and hill all in shades of Miami Vice pink and blue is considered an icon for 1980s dreams of the future, but try as I might, I cannot find anything pointing to the first time this iconic image was seen, who drew it, or what it meant when it was first drawn.

Any help answering this question is appreciated.

[salimfarhat]

This is a good question. Because while this image DID show up in the 80s, it was far from universal. The thing I noticed about what a lot of people talk about when they talk about 80s nostalgia is that it isn't the 80s in its entirety, because the 80s, like every other period of time, was pretty much a mishmash of old, new, and a lot of stuff in between.

I mean when you think of 80s music and look up synthwave that would lead you think that 80s music was primarily that. This simply isn’t true. There was a lot of classic pop, basic rock and roll, and a ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ of jazzy saxophone music. The synth was most certainly there, but it was nowhere near as dominant as you would think. Van Halen’s Jump uses it a lot, but it had lyrics and singing and the singing was intended to sound very clear instead of invoking a memory of a memory of a memory (which is what I find so appealing and fascinating about the vaporwave music genre).

Movies also had huge elements of neo-noir since those were the baby boomer nostalgia (much like our nostalgia for the 80s to early 2000s period now) and some things that we think of as being of the 80s were older elements repackaged with new aesthetics. You mention Miami Vice. I recently got the entire series (because for decades I have heard so much about it but never actually watched it) and while I watched the pilot episode I can definitely say it isn’t pure 80s either. There was a hell of a lot of noir elements in it and a revenge plot that would go very nicely in a late 40s thriller (or a thriller for any time, since vengeance is one of those timeless tropes).

For me, seeing that grid/matrix frame was done in childrens cartoon openings and some home video games. I actually don’t know how often the whole thing was actually used in the same manner in movies or other media. So… actually that’s a really good question. But I won’t lie, even as a kid who grew up in Dubai, I always thought of that image you mentioned when we were driving near the beaches in Dubai (which has a ton of palm trees anyway).

Just giving a touch of my thoughts on how nostalgia is often extremely selective to the point that it sometimes doesn’t even fully or accurately reflect the time period it is referencing.

[PeachClover]

Originally posted by salimfarhat:

This is a good question. Because while this image DID show up in the 80s, it was far from universal. The thing I noticed about what a lot of people talk about when they talk about 80s nostalgia is that it isn't the 80s in its entirety, because the 80s, like every other period of time, was pretty much a mishmash of old, new, and a lot of stuff in between.

I know about that. The diet drink Tab was very iconic in the 80s, so many people have this idea that Tab was invented in the 80s, but it was actually invented in 1963, and marketed toward women. The reason why it was so popular in the 80s is because Diet Coke was invented in 1982, and what seemed to have happened is that the original drinkers of Tab talked about it in relation to the new Diet Coke. However, it was considered uncool to say you started drinking something because your mother or grandmother liked it.

I agree with you that in order to really appreciate and celebrate a moment in time, one has understand that nothing is ever isolated from being effected by the past or from effecting the future, and that is beautiful. However, what I find so awe inspiring about the 80s is that it was a time of firsts or to put it another way, there were several different types of new frontiers where there were no rules and no established scale by which to judge the quality of something. Home computers were just one of those frontiers, but for the way all of these things have impacted my life, I look back at all of it with genuine reverence.

I mean when you think of 80s music and look up synthwave that would lead you think that 80s music was primarily that. This simply isn’t true. There was a lot of classic pop, basic rock and roll, and a ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ of jazzy saxophone music. The synth was most certainly there, but it was nowhere near as dominant as you would think. Van Halen’s Jump uses it a lot, but it had lyrics and singing and the singing was intended to sound very clear instead of invoking a memory of a memory of a memory (which is what I find so appealing and fascinating about the vaporwave music genre).

Understanding the music from the 80s is a lesson is world history. Synthwave probably would not exist if it weren't for electric organs which became popular in the mid-60s because despite their cost, they allowed one instrument to have so many sounds. Electric keyboards replaced them in the 70s as an cheaper alternative. The electronic sound influenced everything. The Who used them in Baba O'Reily in 1971, ABBA used them in Take A Chance in 1978, and I think it was the very fact that the idea was moving across countries that allowed it to be accepted and evolve into these new forms of music.

What's funny is that if you really look at it, New Wave is really the British take on 1950s Doo Whop. The Thompson Twin's Hold Me Now, is probably the most easily recognizable as Doo Whop with electronic instruments. Synthwave was evolving out of these popular sounds with emphasis on the pleasing tones created from purely synthetic instruments. What is clear to me now in a way that I would not have understood before all of this research is that the artists making this music and these sounds had an entirely different idea and purpose than the fans who would associate the music to particular ideas, and it is this very disconnect between artists and listeners that helped other artists to create the sounds that they did from each step that came before.

Movies also had huge elements of neo-noir since those were the baby boomer nostalgia (much like our nostalgia for the 80s to early 2000s period now) and some things that we think of as being of the 80s were older elements repackaged with new aesthetics. You mention Miami Vice. I recently got the entire series (because for decades I have heard so much about it but never actually watched it) and while I watched the pilot episode I can definitely say it isn’t pure 80s either. There was a hell of a lot of noir elements in it and a revenge plot that would go very nicely in a late 40s thriller (or a thriller for any time, since vengeance is one of those timeless tropes).

And for a lot of the same reason too! The late 40s and the early 80s both saw Americans who were drafted into a war having returned long enough to start feeling the post traumatic shock of those times, but whereas late 40 America believed in emotional conservatism, early 80s America believed in full emotional expression, so they let their feelings out. It was a time of emotional indulgence. Violent movies gave rise to hyper masculinity "macho", because people let their mood effect the social atmosphere instead of bringing themselves back to the social atmosphere from whatever they were feeling. It happened with comedy too: comedies started to really let loose and work themselves up into complete fantasy. Many people don't realize that Back the Future was supposed to be a comedy with a hefty amount of vicarious wish fulfillment. Allowing all of these emotions to be expressed and embraced created a confidence that allowed these feelings to coexist and provoke thought, eventually giving us movies like the Heathers and Beetlejuice, as well as bands like Twisted Sister and The Fat Boys. What I love about the 80s is this emotional indulgence, the awareness of this emotional indulgence, and the fact that there is never any apologizing for it.

For me, seeing that grid/matrix frame was done in childrens cartoon openings and some home video games. I actually don’t know how often the whole thing was actually used in the same manner in movies or other media. So… actually that’s a really good question. But I won’t lie, even as a kid who grew up in Dubai, I always thought of that image you mentioned when we were driving near the beaches in Dubai (which has a ton of palm trees anyway).

Just giving a touch of my thoughts on how nostalgia is often extremely selective to the point that it sometimes doesn’t even fully or accurately reflect the time period it is referencing.

I think what is so wild for me is that I hadn't seen it before becoming completely obsessed with the 80s. To be honest, my love of the 80s started with the cartoons that came out of the 80s because companies realized that they could use cartoons to sell products, and that created a special moment, to me a miraculous and holy moment, when several companies were desperate for anything the writers could throw at them, so the time was ripe for genuine creativity in animation. I love this time so much that I have wanted to learn everything about it, every shared cultural moment that made it what it was. I have learned that there was not one unified experience of the 1980s, there were so many types of people living so many different types of lives in so many different types of places. Even though I have chosen not to list them, I am acutely aware that there were many shared and personal tragedies, and these too shaped everyone's lives as well as their creations. In order to fully appreciate all of these things, I needed to understand not only people's goals, but also their fears, because no one can run toward something without running away from something else.

Yet, for all of the countless hours I have spent discovering what was and how it came to be, the one question that remains unanswered is how this image has not shown up in anything I have seen from the 80s itself while somehow in its elusiveness come to represent the decade so ubiquitously that no one questions why it serves as the decade's icon at all.

[PeachClover]

Originally posted by salimfarhat:

For me, seeing that grid/matrix frame was done in childrens cartoon openings and some home video games.

Do you remember which tapes? Can you link a clip of the opening?

[salimfarhat]

Originally posted by PeachClover:

Originally posted by salimfarhat:

For me, seeing that grid/matrix frame was done in childrens cartoon openings and some home video games.

Do you remember which tapes? Can you link a clip of the opening?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dh_xGfrdbhY

You see the power of selective memory? I would have swore that the opening to Pole Position had it. But it is pretty damn close. The Music and gradient graphics and the title graphic are all there.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o2Z1yLO9C-Q

OK So this one has it right at the beginning, but it isn't a landscape, but it does feature a grid, it just isn't an open field.

https://youtu.be/60Bt1nNkC4U?t=1399

At this time I found something kinda like it while hunting for another opening.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AOI5g8jWjd0

Yeah this is another one where in my mind formed an image of something similar. But I think it was because of the cool looking digital-like (actually 2D hand drawn) knight riding a dragon.

Man oh man, finding stuff that kinda mildly looks like might not be difficult, but that exact image? It's proving very hard. I'll dedicate more time to trying to find more later.

Oh and that game is the 1988 game Neuromancer. It has a digita matrixl field, but since it's 1988 it is isn't exactly as we think of it. But they had to work with what they had, especially for home computer games.

[salimfarhat]

Oh I forgot. The matrix grid thing, I remember a place that was confirmed to have it at one point in my childhood. Sinbad's wonderland in Dubai, that arcade I mention constantly since it is the only childhood arcade of mine that I have actual pictures and information on.

Here's the video: https://youtu.be/M5_sAbB1U3o

The geometric grid appears at the 1:05 minute mark. You don't see a wideshot of it, but it's obvious in the mural.

[salimfarhat]

I just had to come back. I just remembered the movie Rock and Rule (1983) that movie was absolutely chock full of that type of imagery. The grid, the color palette, the 80s aesthetic (which is surprising given that 1983 was still quite early in the decade and the aesthetic wasn't fully developped yet).

The scenes when Moc (the villain) is deploying his techno tricks stinks of that, especially his first scene with Angel. It is also present in other parts of the movie.

[salimfarhat]

Just necroing this since I found some boxart for a game from 1990 that really does fit this description

http://www.abandonia.com/files/boxshots/27900_boxshot_1.jpg

I think the pink text works because a lot of early CGA text in some games really did have that shade of pink. I remember it because I did see it, but it must have been super early on, like in 1990 or 1991. Man those years passed fast and yet and I felt a lot happened in them.

[PeachClover]

Originally posted by salimfarhat:

Just necroing this since I found some boxart for a game from 1990 that really does fit this description

http://www.abandonia.com/files/boxshots/27900_boxshot_1.jpg

I think the pink text works because a lot of early CGA text in some games really did have that shade of pink. I remember it because I did see it, but it must have been super early on, like in 1990 or 1991. Man those years passed fast and yet and I felt a lot happened in them.

That pretty cool and kind of funny. It might be worth using as a poster in the arcade.

[salimfarhat]

That game is a Narc clone for the PC. It is an OK game and full of early 90s digitalized photos.

[salimfarhat]

Found a discussion on this with some interesting answers: https://ask.metafilter.com/283999/Who-originated-the-ubiquitous-laser-neon-grid-design-of-the-80s

[salimfarhat]

Just dropping by with another interesting discovery... Apparently the logo of Shapiro Glickenhaus Entertainment (which gave us such classics as Maniac Cop in 1988) had that building/palm tree/sunset logo. But no digital landscape.

https://youtu.be/0qAolRKcYJ8