STELLA HUANG


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Weirdcore Nuturing Guidance



Keywords:  Research-based Project, Internet Aesthetics, Weirdcore Culture, Web 2.0-3.0
Beijing, 2022


Weirdcore is a subculture/visual art that emerged at the end of the Web 2.0 era. The low-pixel characterises it, mass piling of material of the web 1.0 era, anonymous editing and publishing; Conceptually, it creates a sense of fear and nostalgia through references to theories such as liminal space, the Uncanny Valley, and existentialism. In my opinion, weirdcore is compensation for the dislocation of contemporary society. People seek a balance between reality and fiction through weirdcore art.





Project Introduction:


Weirdcore Nurturinig Guidance is a 5-minute weirdcore style video art that uses 3D scene modelling, video editing, coding, AI voice technology, etc. The video compares Weirdcore art to a newborn baby, mimicking the process of birth and conforming to the Chinese Weirdcore style in content. Also, this video contains a great deal of my discussion on the current state and trends of the internet, such as media brainwashing, empiricism, and meta-universe. Through this work, I invite the audience to enter a thematic space of Weirdcore and get to know the confusion, nostalgia, and fear that come with the end of the Internet 2.0 era.

The core narrative of this work is based on the observation/fact that, since the epidemic in 2020, people's living standards have plummeted, and the social and spiritual pressure has risen sharply. In this oppressive era, Weirdcore is like a newborn that originates from the Internet. Its retro nature has aroused people's collective memory of the Web 1.0 era, and the image features different from the mainstream aesthetic, making it look like a freak. The video is narrated in the mother's voice and shows the process of "nurturing" weirdcore images in the first-person perspective. The role of the mother can be either the Internet or everyone as an audience.



Research:


  •  Weirdcore?

Visually, it is strongly influenced by the general look and feel of images shared on the older internet(web1.0), roughly a period spanning from around the late 90s to mid 2000s. Amateur editing, primitive digital graphics, lo-fi photography, and image compression are some of the most common elements found in Weirdcore images.




Thematically, Weirdcore often conveys a feeling of dread, brought forth by its low-quality imagery and a lack of context regarding the location or the message being shown. This does not mean that Weirdcore is deeply rooted in horror, however, as the feeling of fear left on the viewer is merely a side effect of placing them in an unfamiliar setting or context. This is purely subjective, however, and depends on the viewer, their own experiences, and the content of an edit; while some people might find a Weirdcore image scary or ominous, others might feel nostalgia or even a feeling of comfort. Depends on interpretation.


  • Dislocation in the Media Age

The rapid development of technology has led to great changes in people's cognitive methods.




After being exposed to a large amount of information (such as cheesy videos, vulgar live broadcasts), inconsistent with the traditional values at a high frequency and in a high quantity, people will have a confused and helpless feeling of virtual reality derailment, which could be seen as dislocation.





Design Process: Narrative Structure

  • Part 1: Superior natural environment
This part explained the environment in which the weirdcore was born. The empty streets at the beginning match the real streets in the epidemic era, and the layout model of the building refers to Michael Wolf. To create a feeling of information surplus in the Internet era, I used a lot of early Internet textures in the first part.

After entering the room, there is only a pregnant woman sitting in front of the computer screen in the closing scene, symbolising the mother of weirdcore. The next scene appears in the form of a computer webpage while the BGM plays the parenting guidance. The website includes a bird singing experience, post-mortem photos, a birth site, nucleic acid testing, and 2019 Eden apples. These pages all insinuate the epidemic in the style of weirdcore. Only in such a repressive environment can the weirdcoe breed.




  • Part 2: Reincarnation
This part wants to create a sense of the Chinese underworld because, in Chinese mythology, the underworld is the place of reincarnation. At the same time, the scene simulates the game process from the first-person perspective and uses the concept of liminal space. According to the uterus shape map held by the figure, it can be seen that this is the fertilisation process in the mother's body. The buildings beside the road refer to the form of Chinese paper-wrapped boxes (burned to the dead), and it can be found that the gods on the road imply "reincarnation".







  • Part 3: Freak
This part mainly introduces the composition of the weirdcore image. The video adopts the form of Photoshop retouching to give birth to a weirdcore picture in the form of labouring, and the 3D scene in the background is a symbol of the birth canal.




  • Part 4: Nurturing guidance
In order to create the effect of preaching, the last part adopted the form of a news broadcast. Through the use of AI voice technology, the hostess in a Chinese wedding dress is giving her advice about "children" in the news. The screen was interspersed with a large number of videos that brought a sense of dislocation in the era of short videos. In terms of language, it quoted the discussion about the poor image in Hito Steyr’s In Defense of the Poor Image. With the appearance of the weirdcore art style, the future of the fusion of virtual and reality is discussed.







    

Final Video: