I find myself contemplating on why I chose Lucid Dreaming. I never have dreams that I remember, maybe one dream in a whole two weeks. I often thought that there was something wrong and maybe I had done something to stop my mind from dreaming. I even had the silly belief that it was because of a dream catcher that I once broke. There was a dream catcher that had hung in the hallway but I only like the middle part of it, the part with the intriguing circle that had a spider web of strings crossing through the middle of it. There were bohemian beads and feathers hanging off it and it was this part that I loved. One day my attraction to it just about burst and cut the middle bit off and hung it over my bed where to this day it still hangs. I often think that I have angered someone by doing this and in return my dreams have been stolen from me. While this is sort of meaningless I think this is the reason that Lucid Dreaming was so attracting for me. It was something that has been denied to me and something that I have given up thinking about. When I opened my mind to the possibilities that I could achieve with this focus, I immediately started to have ideas of what I could do to communicate the focus.
To me Lucid Dreaming communicates the sense of subconscious and conscious thoughts that are continuously float around in the back of our minds but only surfaces when we surrender ourselves to our spiritual dream side. Such thoughts of freedom and belonging are constantly in the back of my mind and I feel that it often surfaces as my personal aesthetic.
The first photographs that I took for this focus was of birds. It was a subconscious act and I didn't realise that I was focusing on birds until I looked back through the photos. However I have not incorporated these bird images into any of my pieces of artwork for reasons that I am not sure of at the moment. I just havn't found the right place for them to go I think. While I was looking through the photos of birds however I found that alot of them had the bright afternoon sun in them. While I continued to look through the photos I felt the sense of freedom in each of them. Using this feeling I then progressed to take a number of photos of the sun and with it the beautiful crops that surround my house. The effect that the afternoon sun had on the crop plants created this beautiful dreaming sense as the outline of the plants was golden and light was shining. These became my backgrounds in my photos.

Another set of experimental photos that I took were at night however there was too much surrounding light and the photos didn't have the dark dream-like effect that I wanted. At first I wanted to work with the idea of torturing and bad dreams but then the aesthetic of freedom seemed to arise back in and I started to create the idea of a bird by using a fabric sheet around me to create wings almost. Again it wasn't planned and just happened to turn out that way.

In the end I decided that the idea of freedom would most likely emerge throughout whatever I did and so I started to experiment with photos to see what sort of dream I could create. The end result was the idea of myself in consciousness and the my birdlike self entering from the darkness and unknown part of my dream into the lucid dream. It is then once I have enetered the dream that I am free. I wanted to communicate the sense that the darkness in my works is the place that is left behind once our minds enter into the lucid dream. The darkness reflects both our consciousness and our previous state of mind (dream) that was occurring before that we are not aware of. It is then once we have entered into the lucid dream that our minds are free and can create what we fell most and want.

Focus - Lucid Dreaming

The focus I am working with is Lucid Dreaming. Lucid Dreaming is this state that we enter when in our subconscious minds and certain elements remain with us when we come back to consciousness. It is the state of being aware of our dreams. It is the images that enter our minds when we surrender ourselves to our inner thoughts when asleep. Thoughts and images, whether significant or not, emerge in our minds in the form of dreams. These dreams may carry with it a message or multiple meanings or might reflect our inner self, whether it is the struggles we face in daily life, the moments of euphoria we experience or perhaps the subconscious thoughts we have that we may never notice.

TOM CHAMBERS

Spring's Landfall (2006)

This piece of work explores the idea of lucid dreaming and how we get ourself into unknow situations in our mind. It is about making things a reality in our minds and dreams. When we are left without our sense of sight we can dream up more things in a way that we would not normally explore in our normal state.

ANDREJ GLUSGOLD

Ballerinas (After Degas)

The use of lighting creates a sad and isololated mood in the photographs. It is almost saying that like ballerinas people have to hold their grace, posture and self during dark and uncomfortable times.

Past Works of Synaethesia

Here are some examples of past synaesthesia works. I particularly like the last on as it explores lucid dreaming in a beautiful and calm way.

BillViola

Emergence, 2002
Video Installation
Color High-Definition video rear projection on screen mounted on wall in dark room
Photo: © Kira Perov

Two Women, 2008
Color High-Definition video on plasma display mounted on wall
Performers: Pamela Blackwell and Weba Garretson
Photo: Kira Perov

We have all come from a place of the unborn and we
are all here for a short period of time. we have to cross a
threshold of water and light to arrive and to leave. we will
ultimately all go back to this eternal non-spatial, non-temporal
world of potentiality. a lot of my work deals with questions
like this, of giving birth, death and human transition.

(http://www.designboom.com/eng/interview/viola.html)

Eadward Muybridge

Eadweard Muybridge was a pioneering photographer in the late 1800’s. The story is that he set out to answer a question: “Is there a time in a horse’s gallop when all four hooves are off the ground?” To do this he developed an ingenious method of rapidly taking sequential images. As a result, he both answered the question (”Yes.”), and embarked on the creation of the first formal sets of high-speed sequential photographs of both animals and people in motion. His photographic sequences of humans, horses and other animals walking, running, turning, carrying and moving in other ways are still an invaluable resource for artists today.

YOO SEUNG-HO

YOO SEUNG-HO
Eoheung - Once upon a time 2006
Purchased 2007. The Queensland Government's Gallery of Modern Art Acquisitions Fund
Collection: Queensland Art Gallery
Image courtesy: One and J Gallery, Seoul

Yoo Seung-ho, “Bzzz……”, ink on paper, 200×157cm，2007

On first glance you might think you are looking at a traditional Korean landscape painting, but on closer inspection the presumed brushstrokes appear as thousands of tiny, grain-size Hangul (traditional script of Korea). This painstaking process is Yoo Seung-ho’s signature mark, a form of poetry inspired by the surreal ‘calligrammes’ of Guillaume Apollinaire (where words make up a shape). With a sense of tongue-in-cheek humour, many of Yoo’s delicate works are linguistic puns that highlight the absurd difference between how a word sounds and its associated meaning. History is humorously referenced in Yoo’s works, which draw format, scale, technical virtuosity and spiritual rigour from traditional Chinese and Korean aesthetics.

Yoo Seung-ho has been praised as one of a select few of his generation who have rejuvenated the artistic and spiritual practice of the traditional arts in Korea.

Thukral & Tagra

Indian artists Jiten Thukral and Sumir Tagra reflect on the dynamism and ambition of India's rapidly growing economy.