Lucid Dreaming

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“Lucid Dreaming” involves a two-channel, double-sided, synced, and looping virtual Sigmund Freud character in Pixar style, reciting passages from E.T.A. Hoffman’s story, 'Der Sandmann'. The abject nature of the dialogue from the true voice of Freud serves to highlight artifice. After a session of passages is recited within the video, the virtual Freud glitches, ruptures and deflates only to regenerate back into full form - alluding to the aspect of artifice, malleability, and immateriality of the digital avatar. Between each total eclipse the landscape dissolves and reveals itself differently, alluding to the notion of the Surrealist montage and the dream.

Particular sections of passages selected by the artist focuses on the character “Olympia” - of whom the protagonist in the story, Nathaniel, falls in love with and is revealed later on to be an automaton (a mechanical doll). The double-sided nature of the 3D animation references the psychological aspect of the double as well as heightens the physical embodiment of the virtual space.  Freud references heavily on Der Sandmann in his 1919 essay “The Uncanny”, ruminating on wax-work figures, artificial dolls and automatons, playing on the notion of desire, objectification, and perceived agency within avatars, self, and the other.

The artist would like to thank & acknowledge the following: