The role of Frutiger Aero aesthetics as a visual nostalgic medium in Chinese Dreamcore Visual imagery

Abstract

Treball de Fi de Màster en Estudis d'Àsia-Pacífic en un context global. Curs 2024-2025

Tutora: Nausikaä El-Mecky

This thesis investigates the role of Frutiger Aero aesthetics as a visual medium of nostalgia within Chinese Dreamcore imagery, a genre of algorithmically disseminated videos that integrate visual references from the 2000s. The study examines how the rise of Chinese Dreamcore on the Chinese video platfrom Bilibili reflects not a return to historical authenticity, but the emergence of a digitally mediated and emotionally coded form of reflective nostalgia. Through this study of Chinese Dreamcore, the thesis contributes to current debates on affective media and the politics of nostalgia. It concludes that visual nostalgia in the digital age is a technologically mediated emotional template shaped by algorithmic infrastructures, standardized aesthetic codes, and platform-driven affective demands. This structure offers comfort while simultaneously stylizing collective memory, raising critical questions about how emotional perception is structured, circulated, and consumed within platform-based visual culture.