Valerie Caputo Creates Playful Ambient Vignettes that Evoke the Early Online Era

Listen to interactSTYLE, her new and fully AI-free release as DV-i

Valerie Caputo is a Manhattan-based multimedia artist that occupies herself with the artefacts of digital and online worlds.

Under the moniker DV-i, the producer and DJ has been making experimental electronic music for the past decade, working with like-minded creatives from hyperpop producer A.G. Cook to indie chiptune band Anamanaguchi.

Finding herself on the forefront of the breakbeat hardcore revival in the mid- to late 2010s, she’s been turning towards calmer sounds recently, fusing elements of classic IDM, video game soundtracks and the ambient sides of techno and drum’n’bass.

DV-i, press photo

Her newest release, interactSTYLE (2026), is a downloadable file archive that contains multiple folders:

• A collection of ten short ambient jungle-inspired loops designed as user interface themes for Nintendo 3DS or PS Vita – you can upload them directly to your handheld device, but only if it’s jailbroken.

• A bunch of commissioned illustrated wallpapers and alert sounds to customize your desktop computer.

• All unlooped mp3s of the tracks, so you can listen to interactSTYLE as a regular EP of digital music if you wish – which is actually what I do.

interactSTYLE reminds me of late 1990s and early 2000s IDM – the sort you’d find on contemporary compilations like A Future Of Nostalgia or Virtual Dreams.

Caputo’s sound design harks back to that rompler aesthetic often found in video game soundtracks of that era. These two- to three-minute loops feel more like console loading menu background music though, evoking starry-eyed escapist visions of early internet and gaming culture with their layered wave rom synth sounds over subtle, unobtrusive breaks (think Aphex Twin’s late-1990s downtempo side, as showcased on tracks like Flim or IZ-US).

illustration by fredrin + dv-i

Dig into the ReadMe file included in the download archive and you’ll find a deeper explanation of the project from the artist herself:

“With interactSTYLE I wanted to call attention to an era of the internet and an era of computing/portable technology that is mourned yet still exists. In the midst of Generative AI poisoning our world (and stealing our jobs), algorithmic bubbles and walled gardens, the internet that we use to educate ourselves and customize our digital lives is still thriving. The internet of deviantart, illustrators and commissions is still alive and well. I wanted to use DV-i as a multimedia project to put forth the positive digital realms that are threatened, yet still persist in the present day.”

Listening to interactSTYLE, I found myself reminiscing about late night desktop PC sessions, connecting with the internet through 56k dial-up modem, chatting on nerdy newsgroups and surfing on weird GeoCities sites.

The early internet was a place to learn and share and play and connect. For me, it was mainly a place of awe and wonder – where niche interests could blossom and outsiders could find connection.

Though large portions of the online sphere have become commercialized and enshittified in the quarter century since then, it’s still possible to use the internet in a positive and wholesome way. Not all of it has to become purely transactional. Like Caputo says, the community is still out there – we just need to take an effort to find it, and Big Tech won’t make it any easier for us.

interactSTYLE feels nostalgic and countercultural in that way, but it’s also a deeply hopeful piece of ambient electronic music, inspiring us to look back for a moment, not out of luddism but to find the right way forward. There should be room for nuance in our views. But nuance is bad for business.

There’s an important lesson from the scientific studies around social media that we can apply to the current AI craze: New technologies are only worth pursuing if they’re net positive for humanity and nature. If they’re not essentially making the world a better place, we should refrain from applying them widely.

By the way, Caputo says that “no AI was used in the production of this release or its associated art.”

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