It took longer time than suspected to make the presentation. It was a challenge to select the most important topics and boiled them down to five minutes, but when it was done, I had a much better overview.
It was pretty hard to hear the live streaming part, I was, therefore, more focused on the chat, during the session.
Afterward, I emailed Ed asking for his comments. He was nice to send me a little summarize and added some thoughts of his own.
Ed thinks there were two threads of interest. One is of the inherent “analogue” nature of the 20th-century surrealist movement – how it relied on very organic and natural principles to depict unnatural but still mechanical (man-made) objects (melting clocks for example). Second is of the absurdities, juxtapositions or textual elements that force the audience to interpret (Rene Magritte) or visual allusions (Joan Miro).
Ed and some of the others talked about the idea of capturing something of the essence of dreams is not new, but the technique of keeping a dream diary and somehow disciplining yourself to make notes of key elements. Ed had a music dream diary – and this led to a discussion about how the more you document your dreams, the more vivid your dreams become.
There was a general suggestion of how I could tap into dreams by summarizing them or sketching them.
My word cut-up approach has the same feel – juxtaposing ideas and concepts as they often are smashed together in dreams. William Burroughs had a profound influence on the late 1970s, post-punk “Industrial” art projects such a “Coum Transmissions” (referenced by Joseph Delaney).
Joseph, Joe, and others contributed to an idea of the capture of dreams as what Ed would call, a waking ritual (a pen and pad beside the bed).
Ed:
It’s interesting that you get other people to put the cut-up words together. Listen to “Williams Mix” by John Cage, a tape piece constructed by chance procedures, splicing of hundreds or thousands of sound clips, by many associates of Cage and Cage himself. Pieces of audio tape were categorized and placed into bowls. Composer friends of Cage would pick pieces of tape out of a chosen bowl (city, country, electronic, manually produced, wind, and “small” sounds) and splice them into the piece.
Miriam:
‘I also have an interest in surrealist, the interesting factors of surrealist that I like are inappropriate and unreal, however, it doesn’t separate from real life, it magnifies the feeling of an artist, how they feel about the real life.I like the way Eng asked people to pick words, try to find the connection of them, and showing them on a picture.it is hard to form an absurd thought by one person.
Manolis:
I’m looking forward to the introduction of code to Eng’s work. Looking forward to digital surrealism
Nancy:
Eng’s approach shows thought, experimentation, research, rethinking, and reworking. Insightful. It is interesting to see her art as a connection to the surrealist process, using dreams as to tool to explore the changing of the human body and integrating traditional and digital tools to find her way
Inga:
Eng has discovered her voice, I think. Sadly, she didn’t include her all dream illustrations (which I think are great), but I love that using automatic drawing technique, let her developed and (in a way) interpret her dreams. Also, that she doesn’t mind playing with her personal experiences and willing to use elements as a part of the game
Will:
I am really interested in the idea of the image generator Eng talked about, this has the ability to generate far more results than the human, also I would be interested to see if Eng pursues a 3d motion graphics approach to surrealism
Inga:
I wonder, what Eng is thinking how she would present her work in the end?
Inga Linevičiūtė: also, Eng can create a platform or a place, where people can submit their dreams and become a part of this generated image project
My reflection:
It was a good experience showing my project and getting comments and feedback from the other students, Jonathan and Ed.
It was important that people en general liked the images and the surrealistic visualization methods I have used. It strengthens my idea of making a bank of visual material from where I can experiment with media and different expression forms.
Ed talked about two threads of interest; one is about depicting, objects and motif in the surrealistic field and the other about absurdities and juxtapositions. I have mostly been focused on the second thread; ex. my cut out words experiment. I’m not sure if I will follow the other thread; I do not have to be 100 % surrealistic, just use element I find interesting, but I will defiantly pay attention to this area.
Using surrealism is a skeleton for my development and not a project to a reinvention of surrealism.
The idea of making a dream-machine and all the links I got inspire me a lot and will be something I have to investigate.
Links:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/COUM_Transmissions
https://www.theguardian.com/books/2001/jun/16/williamburroughs
https://mattrogalsky.bandcamp.com/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dreamachine
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Throbbing_Gristle
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genesis_P-Orridge
Eng Agger · MA Fine Art Digital 