1990tych

1990tych is a term that has appeared in online discussions and speculative design writings to denote a proposed artistic and cultural category. It is not widely documented in established reference works, and there is no consensus on its precise meaning or boundaries.

The coinage appears to pair the year 1990 with the suffix -tych, a pattern used in some neologisms to suggest a system, style, or collection. There is no authoritative etymology, and sources for the term are limited and informal.

In speculative usage, 1990tych refers to an aesthetic that imagines the early internet era as a mythic or ritualized environment, combining elements of retro digital graphics, glitch effects, and modular typography with themes of memory, documentation, and cultural memory. Proponents describe it as multi-disciplinary, crossing visual art, music, and writing.

Because the term lacks formal documentation, there are no canonical works identified as 1990tych. Descriptions of it usually appear in forum posts, informal glossaries, and fictional or hypothetical art projects rather than scholarly or archival sources.

Related concepts include retro-futurism, vaporwave, glitch art, and late-20th-century design studies.