Most of us, while scrolling over the internet, would at some point encounter one of these odd images, typically featuring the snapshot of a place that triggers an uncanny sensation. Strangely, these pictures do not create uncanniness by horrific elements. The architectural elements and objects often appear normal and insignificant, except for some dissonance in the way they combine. Moreover, rather than being forwardly scary, these spaces come across as disconcerting yet nostalgic or even soothing on occasions. Netizens refer to these arts as the “core aesthetics,” such as Weird Core, Dream Core, and Urban Core. Many of these core arts rely on the use of space to achieve the effects. In these eerie environments, space is deliberately distorted, and the normal spatial experience is destroyed to create an unsettling, surreal feeling that one would not experience in day-to-day life.
These internet aesthetics, especially Dream Core, are partly a continuation of the 20th century surrealism, which shares many commonalities in concepts and executions1. Surrealism emerged as a reflection of its time; it uses symbolic languages and irrational expressions to evoke reflections on society, politics, and culture. Surrealistic arts similarly distort our perception of familiar objects and settings by either twisting their features or misrepresenting them in a manner that we do not see in real life. Cores, as its modern parallel, inherit many of these characteristics. The connection of these two art movements provides insights into, beyond arts, reflection of space and society they dwell upon.
A common association regarding the creation of this strangeness is the concept of liminal space.2 While liminality does work as a frequent component, it is far from being the whole story. The key to the unique experience of these spatial compositions is the distortion of the familiar, and liminality is merely one of the integrals. Looking at these distorted spaces triggers discomfort because the brain is alerting that something is wrong and trying to stir up an instinctual response. Even though this response to things being weird is a survival instinct that has existed for millions of years, the element that triggers the alarm—which in this case is the subtle oddity in spatial composition—is not that old. Nevertheless, these distortions of space universally trigger a subconscious feeling of uneasiness, almost as if they are something humans shared deep inside. Could this be a feature from the collective unconscious of modern humans? If so, how was it formed?
I took a closer look at these “cores” and found out that although formed by different elements, they mostly share a commonality: dissatisfaction. There is dissatisfaction from personal to cosmopolitan scale: trauma, regrets, alienation, society… Under this premise, the spaces are means to question and quietly rebel against their reality—very much like their 20th century precedent. As a form of art, the uniqueness of these “cores,” as opposed to ordinary internet venting, is that rather than plain negativities, they are faintly reaching towards an alternative reality, one where physical and mental autonomy has space to stretch. They are a means to escape: distressed by reality, people turned towards this conceptual destruction for expression and for comfort; they made spaces where things do not have to make sense—in contrast to the stressful reality, where things are forced to be in a certain way and where people have little control over their present and regret for the past. This is a means to temporarily release oneself from the modern environment and its way-too-recognized routines. It silently challenges the existing conditions by twisting its associated features and invoking reflection on their rationality.
The spaces are weird because they do not comply with the norms of the world with which we are familiar: staircases that lead into walls; long corridors without windows; grass grows inside the room; furniture placed in awkward positions; empty public spaces, such as shopping malls, which should be busy. The spatial dissonance links to a feeling of “incorrectness,” as only a fragment of all possibilities is defined as “correct” or “normal.” Our world operates under an artificial rule set that, implicitly or explicitly, demands things to be in a certain way. Very much like social norms, there are uniform, underlying rules on how spaces should be that people have absorbed and called “normal.” When the space needs to promote efficiency, methods that increase space utilization, lower moving distance of mostly used routes, and maximizing the user’s speed in getting things done are the major controls. These straight path solutions lead to spaces that are highly monotonous and rigorous in their logics, as we see in many office and commercial buildings. While configurations vary, their nature remains unchanged.
Under the frame, the range of spaces that are “correct” to create is fairly narrow. Modern spaces of all kinds have evolved to be highly efficient, comfortable, and scientific–things “core spaces” are now challenging. Of course, space must admit the validity of rules—comfort, safety, harmony, efficiency, materiality, and more—to function properly, which is why architects must go through rigorous training. Not that the prevalent point-to-point method in commercialized spaces is invalid; quite the opposite, it is too logical, especially under a framework that is questionable by itself. The point is not to design internet-aesthetic-based quirky spaces—many of them are not inhabitable or simply do not make physical sense. “Core” are not solutions but inspirations; they lead us to rethink what space should and can be. If people are destroying space to seek shelter, should this rise some reflection on the out concept of “good” space and the systems of thought they are built upon?
- Song, Jia-Yu, and Won-Ho Choi. “A Study on the Inheritance of Dreamcore Art and Surrealism.” Hanguk Kontencheu Hakhoe ICCC Nonmunjip (2023): 73-74. ↩︎
- Liminality/liminal space: Liminality describes a transitional stage, in which the past phase is still lingering and the phase ahead is yet to come. The transition can be both spiritual, such as going from high school to college, or physical, such as going from the garden to the living room. Liminal space is the space when this moment of transition is prolonged and becomes a state of existence on its own; people described the experience as being trapped between two worlds and being neither-nor. Arts sorely built on liminal space (which is often directly titled “liminal space” largely falls into the parachute term “core” but has certain unique qualities compared to other subcategories with the suffix “core.” It is however not the focus of this article. ↩︎