I used AI to dress myself up as a fish. Speaking of fish, I created one with human legs and gave it chicken wings as arms. Last week, I had a boy enter a massive, hairy nose to use as an obstacle course. This week, I put a running spigot on my forehead. From outfits made of toast and bacon to furniture drenched in melted cheese and soda cans filled with curly hair — I’ve created a ton of absurd and weird things. Is it original? I don’t and I don’t care. But you’re here for the how and why?

The How?
Look at the everyday, ordinary things around you and start questioning their function, utility, and purpose… then flip them completely on their head.

Is it comfortable? Make it uncomfortable.
Is it pleasant? Make it disturbing.
Is it highly praised? Humble it.

Sabotage everything normal and push it to the extreme. Morph it with your own experiences, obsessions, problems, or whatever you ate last night. Remix it, mash it up, or make it feel wrong. Challenge the form and create something you’ve never seen before.

I, for one, love anatomy, food, slimy animals, costuming, masks, inanimate objects, performance, funky environments, silly juxtapositions, weird sounds, and stupid jokes. When ideas are synthesized through my brain, the output is something like you’ve never seen before. Maybe familiar but definitely not the same.

Ok, the Why?
Does every absurd creation need a “why”? It depends. Are you approaching this from a position of design, social commentary, storytelling, nostalgia, anger, joy or are your creations purely arbitrary? You’ll have to answer that one and it might fluctuate.

This I know: any work with real substance needs a why — even if it’s only implied or left for the viewer to interpret subjectively.

For ABSRRD, the why is simple: escape the ordinary and fully own the nonsense. Every morning I wake up and ask, “What absurd scenario can I create today that challenges the normal, the boring, and the status quo that happily tortures us all?” Then I get to work.

Oddly enough (this is super meta), the creation itself fulfills that philosophy because it’s both the creative act and the living manifestation of the message.

One more thing:
You and I don’t need to be “more” anything. There’s no out-weirding anyone. The world is already insanely strange and all you have to do is give it a little nudge off the cliff.

S-A-B-O-T-A-G-E IT.

Play the Beastie Boys while you’re at it.

I’ll end with this. Your uniqueness is already doing the heavy lifting. Because let’s be honest — I don’t know if anyone has ever told you this:

You’re absurd AF.

See you next week!

Sway 🫠