Week 13 Research / Reflections

In our showcase exhibition, I hoped for our group’s work to be viewed in a free and loose structure in a relaxed environment. This is also similar to watching fragments in replicating a dream-like experience as I have mentioned in my previous post. With our video edited in a looped sequence and having a space to discover and interact with what was around the set design, it allowed for people to enter and leave anytime but also fully engage with our exhibition. 

For our exhibition I was a bit surprised to see our exhibition space smaller in comparison to what I had imagined. However, setting up the partition walls and adding some prop items completed the image of our space replicating a bedroom. It was quite interesting seeing a main pattern of people entering exhibition space by watching our video to then walking around the space and reading or even writing in the dream journal. Even with no group members there to explain our exhibition, I saw from a distance our exhibition being quite intuitive and free in allowing people to discover the space and sit down in watching our video which I thought was very impressive.

I thought my group collaborated quite well in communicating our strengths and using them to complete our project. Also we felt quite comfortable in giving suggestions to one another about possibilities and adjustments throughout the process. In making our video, I thought we could have communicated more on the technical aspects of how we shoot footage so that it can look even more consistent throughout. As someone who is into video making and finds importance in these technical settings, I felt like I missed out on this opportunity of sharing what I know to my group members so that they can use what they have to the fullest potential. However I intentionally did not talk a lot about this as I thought it may overcomplicate the process but, I was very happy with our end product of what we made together. 

Week 12 Research / Reflections

A question for our group this week in editing was how can we enhance our footage to be  dreamlike and replicate a dream experience. Our thought process whilst editing was to  showcase a series of fragmented shots to represent a dream rather than telling a full narrative and plot of events. An idea and question that gave me this thinking to edit towards was how “Why do people only remember dream episodes versus full narrative experiences?” (Strongman 2014). I found this relatable especially in recalling a dream and relying on the sensory of small visuals. With these small visuals Strongman states (2014), they are the ones we select as being the strongest out of the many our minds assume and have made in the dream state. This dream sequence in our video with a number of shots stitched together I then questions the viewer asking what they have watched, and then recalling these images similar to how we would recall visuals after we awake from a dream. Having these dream snapshots shown in fragments also act as representations of white dreams that are vague experiences of what people have seen or heard in their dream but are not able to extract finer details out of it. These types of dreams are described to be an experience of minimal consciousness and are “neither clear nor vivid, but reduced in quality” (Fazekas, Nemeth & Overgaard (2019). With this in mind our video can then also be concerned with and aim to represent this journey in this state of consciousness of travelling and skimming through these snapshots of dreams. 

References 

Luke, S 2014 “Conscious States of Dreaming” The Journal of mind and behavior, New York: The Institute of Mind and Behavior, Vol.35 (4), p.189-200, https://www.proquest.com/scholarly-journals/conscious-states-dreaming/docview/1688913453/se-2 

Fazekas. P, Nemeth.G, Overgaard.M (2019) “White dreams are made of colours: What studying contentless dreams can teach about the neural basis of dreaming and conscious experiences” Sleep medicine reviews, England: Elsevier Ltd, Vol.43, p.84-9, DOI: 10.1016/j.smrv.2018.10.005 

Week 11 Research / Reflections

This week I had the intention of capturing footage from unusual angles that differs to the human eye in creating these multiple perspectives. I imagined this would contribute to our video in acting as a “sort of short-circuit inside consciousness involving both the spatiality and the temporality of mental life.” (Zippel 2016) of how our minds can jump from one idea to another when dreaming. These short circuit moments I see were insightful in giving me the idea of how they can create areas of spaces within the video that are reflective of the moments in a dream where our senses in reality may be heightened and more dramatised.  

Having found that from dream scientists, “characters, social interactions and emotions are the most valuable” (Fogli,Aiello and Quercia 2020)  in a dream helped me to come up with what type of footage I shoot and what it can represent in the final area. This gave me intention in thinking of multiple interpretations of what I could shoot and their meanings whilst imagining how it may look coupled with other footage. Our group then found it natural in shooting intuitively in areas of our daily lives (e.g regularly visited locations, locations) that were quite familiar to us with the aim of efficiently gathering this type of footage. At this stage of the production process, continuity and similarity in shots were not too vital as creating this dream state we wanted was work to be done in the editing phase for next week.  

References 

Fogli, L. M. Aiello, and D. Quercia (2020) “Our dreams, our selves: Automatic analysis of dream reports,” Royal Society Open Science, Volume 7, Issue 8, https://doi.org/10.1098/rsos.192080

Zippel, N (2016) “Dreaming Consciousness: A Contribution from Phenomenology” Rivista internazionale di filosofia e psicologia, Mimesis Edizioni, Milano, Vol.7 (2), p.180-201, doi:10.4453/rifp.2016.0019  

Week 10 Research / Reflections

In Caracciolo’s research of dreams in media (specifically video games) in conveying an experiential and distorted perspective, I found an interesting diagram that describes types of experiences in how we take in information using our senses.

Caracciolo M (2014) states our experiences can range from feelings and senses we recognise with our bodies of a higher order cognitive functions which include conceptual thoughts, imagination and recognising languages. This then creates links to experiences made up of artefacts, beliefs and values relevant to cultural practices across the world. I see this diagram as valuable in thinking of the representative meanings of the footage we collect such as feelings of nostalgia or a scary type of anxiousness. It then leaves room for each of our shots to be very interpretive of a dream experience of senses inside a dreamstate to also potentially relate to meanings they share with real world events and feelings .   

Yume Nikki (2004) is an example I found in video games where the aim of it is to explore different dream states of the protagonist and collect items from these settings. The use of strong contrasting background scenes such as isolating elements on a black screen I find can assist in emphasising a specific motif (e.g an artefact) of a common dream pattern and what it may mean. Also the use of Yume Nikki contrasting the exploration of eerie and anxiety inducing areas with calming and nostalgic areas can be helpful in creating an engaging flow with a structured pacing of shots to keep the visual interesting in their sequence.  

References 

Caracciolo, M 2014, ‘Those Insane Dream Sequences: Experientiality and Distorted Experience in Literature and Video Game’, in M-L Ryan & J-N Thon (eds), Storyworlds across Media: Toward a Media-Conscious Narratology, University of Nebraska Press, Lincoln, pp. 185–199

Kikiyama (2004), Yume Nikki, PLAYISM