Conceptually, this was the hardest project for me in this class assigned to date. This was not due to the specific assignment parameters but more in the creative direction and execution I was to follow for it. Basically, I had no ethos for a while. I toyed around in my head with an idea to create a fake myspace profile about a really bad musician that thought he was great. I was going to record a couple of intentionally crappy acoustic songs and create a fake profile laced with arrogance. Really, I wanted to see how bad people could hate me. However, my pride as a musician took over and I decided to scrap the idea.
As for my current execution, as of late I have been extremely intrigued by alternate realities as they pertain to different states of consciousness. More specifically, I have been fascinated with dreams and the places we go when we are dreaming. Some people consider these places to be real while others dismiss them as self-manifested images that are born from subconscious desires. I do not take the latter route. I believe that dreams truly serve a purpose and that our mind is an undiscovered planet. My brother and I began researching lucid dreaming about a couple years ago; this is the ability to vividly interact in our dreams and control your actions. It has actually been documented that people have learned to do things while having a lucid dream such as tying their driving a car, or riding a horse. Though completely speculative, I still think that these dreams are phenomena of the human mind and should be examined much more closely.
This is where the inspiration for project four has manifested. In my research of lucid dreaming, I was told to keep a document of my dreams as they occurred; this was to be in essence a “dream journal.” My dream journal was kept under my pillow and when I would awake from a dream I would write down the events in that dream that unfolded (the average human has between 60-100 dreams a night, making many of them hard to remember). Some of these dreams were scribbled down broken thoughts that really made no sense and others I can still remember to this day. In fact, the goal of writing these dreams down was to enhance my overall memory of certain significant events that may have some meaning. What became increasingly disturbing to me was the notion that one day I could become so “good” at lucid dreaming I could possibly exist in a dream world that became more vivid than the current reality that I exist in. Essentially, I was afraid that I might not be able to distinguish between the real world and the dream world if I was to keep pursuing my studies. So, I quit with the journal and I try to get 8 hours of good sleep every night.
Even though I have turned away from lucid dreaming, I am still extremely fascinated by dreams themselves and love to hear about people’s dreams. This is why for my project I wanted to create a “dream blog.” In this blog I ask anyone to post a memorable dream they have had both past and present. I think it would be extremely interesting to see what kind of dreams people have and why. Do you dream in color? Black and white? Are friends and family involved? Do you have a lot of nightmares? I ask that whoever posts on this blog not be afraid of criticism or embarrassment and that they analyze their dreams and how they relate to their daily lives. Happy posting!
Here is the link to dreamblog. Never stop dreaming!
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4 comments:
I think this is a great idea. I personally think dreams mean alot and say a great deal about your mental condition. What do you plan to do when you get everyone's dreams? Will you just post them for everyone to read or do you plan to collaborate them into something else? Either way it will be interesting and I look forward to reading it.
This is a very creative idea and I'm jealous! haha No, but you do meet the requirements. The metatext is very informational and I knew exactly what was going on after I read it. I didn't see any documentation as of yet, but then I didn't see that anyone had posted their dreams yet, either. I'm sure this will come along. As to how you could improve the project - I'm not sure, it was a good idea to include that the person who relates the dream should also analyze it. Good job - V
This is an awesome idea, and I'd be really interested to see what gets posted. How much of it will be real and genuine? I think that you may have a hard time getting real genuine answers (though how would you know) because dreams are often focused around a persons deepest emotions, desires, and fears. These dreams can be very personal and revealing, which some people may be reluctant to share. I really like the idea, and hope it works out.
Nate: First off, sorry that it was hard project. I like the fake musician project - to explore the limits of "bad" as an actual artistic project. But sure, ok, it's hard to be bad when you're good. OK, so the current project is recording dreams - this is a great direction to go. Capture uninterpreted, raw dreams on the dream blog. Perhaps encourage people to illustrate them with materials from the web? One way to think about this is that the web becomes not a place for commerce (Amazon or EBay) and not a place for social representations of identity (Facebook, etc.) but where our dreams end up. Kind of like Australian "dreamtime"? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dreamtime
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