Memphis Group in the context of "Michael Graves"

Vaporwave is a microgenre of electronic music, an Internet aesthetic and meme that emerged in the late 2000s-early 2010s and became well known in 2015. It is defined partly by its slowed-down, chopped and screwed samples of smooth jazz, elevator music, R&B, and lounge music from the 1980s and 1990s, similar to synthwave. The surrounding subculture is sometimes associated with an ambiguous or satirical take on consumer capitalism and pop culture, and tends to be characterized by a nostalgic or surrealist engagement with the popular entertainment, technology and advertising of previous decades. Visually, it incorporates 1990s Web design and imagery, glitch art, anime, stylized Ancient Greek or Roman sculptures, Memphis Design geometric shapes, 3D-rendered objects, and cyberpunk tropes in its cover artwork and music videos.

Vaporwave originated as an ironic variant of chillwave, evolving from hypnagogic pop as well as similar retro-revivalist and post-Internet motifs that had become fashionable in underground digital music and art scenes of the era, such as Tumblr's seapunk. The style was pioneered by producers such as James Ferraro, Daniel Lopatin and Ramona Langley, who each used various pseudonyms. In 2010, Lopatin would release the influential cassette tape Chuck Person's Eccojams Vol. 1, which was later followed by Ferraro's Far Side Virtual. After Langley's album Floral Shoppe (2011) established a blueprint for the genre, the movement built an audience on sites such as Last.fm, Reddit and 4chan while a flood of new acts, also operating under online pseudonyms, turned to Bandcamp for distribution.

The Olivetti Valentine is a portable, manual typewriter manufactured and marketed by the Italian company, Olivetti, that combined the company's Lettera 32 internal typewriter mechanicals with signature red, glossy plastic bodywork and matching plastic case. Designed in 1968 by Olivetti's Austrian-born consultant, Ettore Sottsass (father of the Memphis Group), who was assisted by Perry A. King and Albert Leclerc, the typewriter was introduced in 1969 and was one of the earliest and most iconic plastic-bodied typewriters.

Despite being an expensive, functionally limited and somewhat technically mediocre product which failed to find success in the marketplace, the Valentine "subverted the status quo" of typewriter design, captured the zeitgeist of post-'68 counterculture, and ultimately became a celebrated international icon, largely on account of its expressive design.