Sprint 1 weird

What is the study of WEIRD?
First of all, we can focus on the word weird, which most people think of as a pejorative, a word that denotes bad luck, misfits, abnormal or eccentric, or even suggests a sense of unease or fear, both mysterious and evil forces at work, or the mysterious calm before the storm. But at the same time, weird can actually be a positive word, unique, extraordinary in character and out of the ordinary, and this unique adjective, when used in thought, can add greatly to one’s creative thinking and ability to think, as often weird also means outside the confines of the rules. For example:
Shakespeare’s relationship with the bizarre
You may know that weird is a generic term to describe something unusual, but the word also has an older, more specific meaning. Weird derives from the Old English noun wyrd, which essentially means ‘fate’. By the 8th century, the plural wyrde had begun to appear in texts as a word for Parcae, the Latin name for the goddesses of fate – the three goddesses responsible for spinning, measuring and cutting the threads of life. In the 15th and 16th centuries, Scottish writers used werd or weird in the phrase ‘strange sisters’ to refer to the goddesses of fate. William Shakespeare adopted this usage in Macbeth, where the ‘strange sisters’ are described as three witches. Subsequently, the adjectival usage of weird arose from Shakespeare’s reinterpretation of weird. At the same time we can also find weird in other areas of relevance, with cosmic strings second only to black holes in the astrophysicist’s pantheon of weird objects. They are narrow, super-dense filaments that form in the first microseconds of the universe’s history during a phase transition called ‘inflation’.
If you look closely at them, you will find them carved with strange pagan creatures, more like goblins than people, half-hidden between trees and leaves – here a prickly tree, there what looks like a palm tree.
As an extended fictional device, allegory is mainly used in didactic and satirical fables such as Gulliver’s Travels, Animal Farm and Iluhon. In these masterpieces, ostensibly realistic representations lend a certain strange plausibility to bizarre events …… — David Lodge, The Art of Fiction, 1992
So in any field there is a way of research about weird, to think outside the box to interpret and research can always explore the unexpected results, especially in the art industry, I think art is not only from life, but also above life, and why say above life? Because a good piece of artwork can often cause people to reflect on social events, people’s experiences or the past or the future, and in order to cause reflection, the art creator needs to think outside the box, and this is where WEIRD’s way of thinking is important. In the Theme course, I brainstormed and did a word-making activity in a weird workshop.
I have selected the French synthwave musican- James Kent, who is an electronic musician, for my research. He has borrowed from three films and extracted three backgrounds from futurism, anti-utopia and cyberpunk as his creative concept. The compositional elements of his music are electronic, fractured and mechanical, and he uses synthesizers to form his own style of music. I think he’s also exploring futurism, only in music, but what if we could use synthesize to explore other fields of thought? Or do these only exist in the brain? Will our future food also be replaced by weird synthwaves? Smell? Or eat by sight? Could our clothing also be weird virtual synthwave clothing, including shoes, accessories, and even pets? I think these kinds of thoughts are not just limited to the realm of artistic creation, but are also very relevant to thinking about the future of the real world. This leads to another topic – is weirdness soliciting legitimate forms of research or encouraging pseudo-research? I believe that forms of pseudo-research should focus on how to think about pseudo-research, that we should use the critical thinking and out-of-the-box thinking skills of pseudo-research to explore the viability of the present and the future, and that the examples available today are interdisciplinary thinking and the ability to collaborate. For example, Dyson appliances, a household name, are the result of a collaboration between the engineering disciplines of Imperial College and the design disciplines of the Royal College of Art.

In WEIRD’s class, we learnt about conspiracy theories and did some practical work on the course. In the class, we discovered that through conspiracy theories we can make the mundane unbelievable, as we can see in livescience websites, where many things that we don’t think would be linked together can be linked so naturally by the editors, and this kind of thinking beyond the framework of leapfrogging allows one to think about things themselves from a different perspective and use the thinking skills of pseudo-research to achieve the exploration of future research.In the classroom, we chose the news of dying in bed as a point of inspiration and extended it to the very challenging conspiracy theory of cold, cheese and fire in tandem. How does dying in bed relate to cheese? Our understanding is that because of the cold, we eat a lot of high calorie cheese and the excess heat rubs against the air causing the fire. From this we can compare how cheese as a work of art can break our common perception of the situation? How does it kill people, usually we think it is due to the excessive consumption of high-calorie cheese, which leads to obesity and therefore to disease, while conspiracy theories insert elements from other areas (allergies, fires and after sex).

So an ordinary thing may not break our perceptual habits, but once we redefine the way it develops by thinking in a WEIRD way, we can explore the tandem of things from different areas and thus have a different view of the same thing, and once we get used to brainstorming in this way, we can not only critically appreciate the artwork, but even create great artworks of our own.

12 thoughts on “Sprint 1 weird”

  1. Thanks for sharing the origin of the word “weird”. I’m curious as to what the weirdness is in the art industry, can you give me an example? How do they come from life, and how do they rise above it? “Thinking in strange ways”, what is a strange way? Can you be more specific? For example, scenes or sounds that break our cognitive habits, etc.

    1. Thank you for your comment, your question is explained in the article after the introduction of WEIRD, if you still don’t understand it, you can refer to my next Blog: Orange for specific art examples, thanks.

  2. It is an interesting example, Dyson, combining the critical thinking and technical design. It is a successful commercial transform in the art field. I think the art research would be more useful and practical, and create social value when used in the real life. “Art” is usually seen as not for sale but I think having art design in the normal life benefits people more, because not everyone has the chance to get in touch with art conveniently but if art can be taken in the articles in the daily life, they can also enjoy the art value.

  3. Nothing is more important than the fact that Tianxing Peng showed his point directly, he supposed his idea about the connection with weird and music. He also collected the combine between contemporary art which about the future of human and human-made music. I think it’s really a new topic for me, I had never thought of it before. It offers me a new way to understand weird study, not only stand on the accept of DIFFERENT, but also consider something NEW. Since weird is not just meaning opposite to daily, it is sometimes the new expression of human beings’ life.

  4. Can see that the author has his own unique opinion on because of future technology this can be further reflected in the orange, very good open understanding WEIRD thinking and bring into the art, WEEK1’s blog makes me feel that the author is serious to push the understanding of this thinking pattern and combined with their own READING knowledge to show us the diversity of weirdness. It expresses his own research on futurism and his skill in thinking out of the box. I can define WEIRD more clearly from his text and have a more sober perception, thanks for sharing.

  5. I feel that reading your Blog has been a learning process. I could see your thought process, you started by analysing the word Weird and you thought about the definition and meaning of the word from different perspectives, which I think is a very good way that can help us understand the topic and the course. I saw that you chose the French synthpop musician – James Kent – and then went on to think about interdisciplinary thinking and collaboration in terms of his music, which was really cool.

  6. I believe you have a solid understanding of the word weird. Weird encompasses everything from mythology to well-known authors, and it’s impressive that you’ve expanded its definition to include the art world. James Kent’s artwork is admirable, and your study is skillfully incorporated into it, bringing out your own peculiar ideas. I definitely learned a lot from reading your posts

  7. Tianxing Peng, your choice to examine the etymological root of weirdness and unpack its situated history within Scottish culture was astute and welcome. Through your articulation of the Sprint I can see how the flow of ideas fed into the second Sprint on Play and provides very useful context and artistic research to the thematic development of the Basho as a whole.
    Considering the range of materials used in the post I recommend including citation of sources when and wherever possible, this should also be mirrored with a full set of academic references at the end of your blog (not included in the word count). This will help aid the communicate the rigor of your research and also provide resources for your peers to explore independently if they find your perspective useful.

  8. The logic of the author’s article is very clear, and it can be seen that a lot of reading has been done. I very much agree with the author’s statement in the article that “you can critically appreciate art, and even create your own great art.” Just like the author As in the examples given, use pseudo-research critical thinking to explore present and future possibilities.

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