Video work

Sleep. Something I was finding I had a distinct lack of! Whilst documenting my dreams through written means I decided to document it though video too. I was researching video work and came across time lapse footage, the condensing of time in a video. I created the following film on my laptop using a time lapse program called Gawker. The quality wasn't as high as I hoped, but I am pleased with what I did achieve with such amateur equipment. Next move will be to get hold of a better set up and play with what effects I can create.

 

Susan Hiller

I have been looking at the artist Susan Hiller. In the 1970's she created a body of work concerned with dreams.....

Dream mapping

In 1974, in conjunction with the writer David Coxhead, Hiller published the book Dream: Visions of the Night. The previous year, while working on the book, she conducted a group investigation into the 'origin of images and ideas' called The Dream Seminar (1973). In this work, twelve participants met for twelve weeks to discuss their dreaming and their subconscious interaction or 'dream meetings', documenting their progress in notes and audiotapes. For Dream Mapping, Hiller invited 10 participants to develop a graphics system of recording their dreams.

Then, for three nights, they all slept outdoors in an area of the Hampshire countryside with an unusual occurrence of fairy rings, or circles formed by the marasmius mushroom, chosen because of the myth that if you sleep within one of these circles, you can enter fairy-land. Each participant was given a notebook with a map of the dream site on the cover. Every morning they recorded their dreams using the system of note-taking that they had developed earlier. They noted the similarities and differences among the dreams by the making of collective dream maps, in which they took all of the individual diagrams from each day and superimposed them to create a group notation.

For her solo exhibition at the ICA in London in 1986, Hiller evolved a form of presentation for this material, displaying the open notebooks in individual vitrines, and reproducing a considerable number of the participants' dream maps and diagrams as large wall drawings. 

More Dreams....

I am continuing to record my dreams. I had a break from recording them and it has become less stressful. I record my dreams as remembered, in language that reflects the memories, using commas to show the constant flow of a dream world. As time goes on I find I am able to remember my dreams more vividly, they come back to me with less effort, I find this interesting, it is as if I am training my conscious mind to hold on and retain the thoughts of my unconscious mind.

 

To cope with and to gain control back from the uncontrolled subconscious dream world I am exploring I have began to make strong, sturdy frames out of rough wood. The rough wood reflects the wear and tear my body has through living life. The frames are my way of containing my dreams, controlling the dreams that I feel are out of my control.