01/ TWO COMPETING AESTHETIC
A new viral trend of dystopic and psycheledelic style of maks is subverting the traditional beauty standard of the first filter’s wave
Presenting the visual characteristics of the two main and opposite instragram faces aesthetics
PERFECTIONIST BEAUTY
“It's a perfect face, symmetrical with smooth skin that reminds Kilye Jenner or Kim Kardashian. A face that looks like it’s made out of clay.”
It’s a fresh face with smooth skin, without pores and imperfections. The cheekbones are high, the chin is strong and the platform under the chin forms a ninety degree angle.
It has big cat eyes and long eyelashes. The eyebrows are thick and curved.
The nose is small and thin, while the lips are full and fleshy. Freckles and slightly blushed cheeks contribute to create a natural look.
The face is white but ambiguously ethnic: It looks at you shyly, with an absent air.
Descriptions by The Age of Instagram Face By Jia Tolentino
DISTOPIAN AESTHETIC
“I wanted to create an alternative to the typical beauty masks and dog snouts that were already available trying to define a new distinctly postmodern aesthetic.”
@johwska Spark AR Creator
It's an artificial look that turns people into semi-human, gender-blurred entities
The shapes around the faces behave in physically impossible ways by bending reality and disrupting natural rules
Faces are covered in hyperreal materials with exaggerated properties
Faces are covered with colored fluorescent light and are enveloped in a prismatic glow.
How The Fantastical, Futuristic Art of AR Face Filters Is Subverting Traditional Notions of Beauty aiga eye on design WHY BEAUTY3000 AND OTHER FUTURISTIC FILTERS ARE TAKING OVER SOCIAL MEDIA dazeddigital
Two macro-aesthetic between AR filters: does one exclude the other?
Most of the filters around Instagram are divided into the two macro-aesthetic introduced: these ones present themselves as the opposite of each other and follow two completely different purposes. If the perfectionist beauty aims to adapt user’s faces to fixed standars, the dystopic aesthetic wants to contrast this trend by creating provocative filters as tool of self expression.
The difference is immediately visible in the use of colors and in the types of modification
Is the trend of perfectionist beauty over?
The spread of dystopic filters is taking over starting to subverting the success of the first wave of beauty filters.
The idea of an aesthetic looking to a dystopic future through previously unseen effects, turned out to be particularly appealing to users: it offers an image of oneself never seen before, transcending the physical and mental limitations of how people should appear.
This new aesthetic promoted by a young generation of digital designers, is trying to remap our relationship with beauty and perception of identities, going against the strict standard of the perfectionist one. Their surreal filters spreads radically different ideas, redefining the concept of beauty starting from the digital platforms.
“These filters are about transformation and fun. I think people are getting bored with looking for perfection (..) It's becoming more important for many of us to embrace individualism and weirdness."
Aaron Jablonski – Spark AR creator @exitsimulation
