Vısual language of Kawaii: Aestheticization of everyday life

Abstract

The notion of “Cute” has been studied as a global aesthetic form in consumer and popular culture. Aside from being a dominant aesthetic of mass culture, the cute also became a form of expression with increasing virtual and visual communication. Oscillating between physical world of commodity culture and virtual media culture; cute’s visual, cultural and economic meanings are expanded. The specific form of cute (and inevitably weird) culture has paved its way to the top of the world economy: Japanese Kawaii Culture. The proliferation of Kawaii aesthetic brought about revelations in art, fashion, and design even in the everyday life practices. Obsession with Kawaii culture opens the door to new distorted visualities that create paradoxes between mundane reality of everyday life and surreal fantasy life. The focus of this paper is the exploration of the Japanese cute (and the weird) aesthetics impact and its conceptual methodology in the popular visual culture and the contemporary art scene. As a visual way of distorting everyday life, glitch aesthetics are experimented and used by mostly video artists. In the complementary art work; experimental glitch and multilayered video effects are used for the artistic expression and exploration of ‘distorting everyday life’ regarding Japanese cute’s conceptual methodology; intensification, hybrid visualization and complicated imagery.