The Art of Vaping

Vaping is more than simply a coil heating liquid to evaporation. Sure, it is simply that if we reduce it to its basest function – but to ignore the rest is to cut oneself off from additional delight.

I firmly believe that we are all artists. As children we all had the capacity to wonder at the world, to gaze at things that marvelled us and to get busy with crayons while being instructed not to colour outside the lines. Along the way we switch off and stop noticing things. I’m pretty certain its down to the stuffy nature of the art world and the times we were told we were doing it wrong.

“If I could say it in words there would be no reason to paint.” ~ Edward Hopper

If you have ever stood and looked at Van Gogh’s Starry Night you may, like me, have been blown away by the loops and spirals of thick oil on canvas. It is the same emotional response I get from looking at images of diffraction patterns or the paths traced out in particle physics experiments. Both of which are evocative of the plumes sprouting from a mesh wick.

Spirals and loops of vape, building patterns of waves cascading away from the coil – aggressive, crackling splendour; it interweaves and flows, creating unique patterns in the air. Like snowflakes, no two pulses on the switch of the mod will ever recreate the same image in front of you.

And then there’s exhaling the cloud, as it catches the tiny eddy currents in the room to drift before standing as a metaphor for life and vanishing like it was never there…just a sense of the smell indicating the entity it once was. I can assure you I’ve not been drinking yet, this is a genuine love of the airborne textures I create.

I know I’m not alone, I know you can get this otherwise there wouldn’t be a fascination with subohming or the painstaking efforts to marry the right mod with a fitting atomiser. You love it too; you get the aesthetic of vaping. Like the inspirational Alison Lapper, you paint with your mouth.

But our enjoyment isn’t limited to the visual aspect of vaping. When doing my Art Foundation I discovered a love of aural sculptures and ‘found sound’. It made sense to me that if I adored music then a logical extension is an appreciation of those noises that comfort or challenge us. Waking up to the sound of sheep outside is, to me, as pleasurable as the creaking door in a horror film, I need no image to look at because the sounds are painting pictures in my mind.

Darth Vapous mentioned a similar thing on the POTV forum; the delicious commotion created at the same time of the cloud. The rasp of a Hellfire, the suction of a large-hole dripper – even the whistle of a Kayfun; clicks and snaps, smacks and whooshes fill our ears with the noise of vaping. Pops from flooded wicks that are surprising yet entertaining remind us that the coil is bursting into life and, as the electrical latency of the mod dies away once releasing the switch, the afterburn hiss embraces silence.

Stunning.

*Image of the atomiser from an online vaper called Vape Geek.