City Subconscious turned out exactly as I envisioned from the start. The installation itself became a focal point of the piece, and worked as a generative system. 4 macs are placed into a cube shape that each have the sequence of 7 videos, with the ambient sound effects being played through one of them. The sequence runs autonomously for 3 minutes 30 seconds, and then loops back to the start.
When setting up the installation I discovered that the mac minis that were supporting the files did not hold enough memory to display the files at their highest quality. I therefore had to re-render the file at a lower quality so the machine would work in synchronicity.
Below are some pictures of the installation as it stands at for the assesment, though when it goes on display for exhibition it will be displayed on backlit iMacs that will be able to support larger files.
At night, the people sleep and the city dreams, steam from idle factories billows into clouds, blinking lights dance in the sky. The wind plays in the leaves of trees and the morning dew fizzes on electrical pylons.
City Subconscious is an exploration of forgotten London; late at night when time and space have no meaning; the past present and future become one. It uses native sounds of the city at night that we are normally ignored, and draws attention to areas that are alive through the night though every angle is devoid of people.
My work is based around the way in which we ‘interface’ with machines. I like to challenge the standard conventions of Graphical User Interface (GUI) design, I believe that an element of ‘play’ should be introduced when accessing information and encountering the World Wide Web.
More recently I have been interested in the way we interface with real life, and the ways in which we gather data that then becomes a digitised version of our lives stored on our home computing systems.
City Subconscious looks at the city as an interface, when we wake up in the morning and leave the house we switch it on and make it work for us in the same way a personal computer does. This is what happens to the city when it goes into standby mode at night…
At the final stage of the project now, I have decided on how this project is going to be exhibited. After receiving critical feedback, I have also decided that the name deserted dreams suggests that the project might be about something that it is not.
I think City Subcontious is a more approproate name, suggesting that the city has a living mind and in the small hours of the morning when thre are no people around, the citys memories of the past present and furture become one.
The blurb that will appear in the catalogue will follow in the next post.
The display of the project swill now be 4 macs in a diamond shape placed in the center of a room. In the middle of the macs will be a speaker set. Each machine will have a flash file containing all 8 scenes, that will loop around each other, and one of the machines will handle the sound that will accompany the piece.
This is the first raw image that i am going to work with, this is 100% unedited, and un-manipulated. I want to add some massive structures that will photograph from different parts of London, taken at night as well.
I want this to suggest that whilst its inhabitants are sleeping, the midnight city dreams as well. It has a mind of its own, the city has a night mode when all the autonomous objects dotted around the city, idle, sit in standby mode, resting.
“When the people sleep, the city dreams. Blinking lights dance in the night sky, and the breeze plays in the trees. Early morning dew fizzes on pylons arms, while the city sleeps, the people dream”
It might be worth noting at this point, what is meant by the still moving image. Artist Nick Judd, has been working with this concept, which is based around the idea of a video, that at first glance looks like a still image, but after a time, the image subtly moves. here are some examples below.
Titled: Carmen: London November 15 2008
Titled: Keith
The frame rate on this one looks as though it has been increased (or reduced?) to make the image almost flicker, as if it were an animated series of photographs.
So I am currently at the experimental practice stage of the project.
I currently have a rather sexy amount of still moving images that I took on 2 occasions in the wee hours of the morning. In total there are 45 files, that need to be polished up in After Effects to get rid of some of the grain and have a few filters added to them to entice a little more surrealism.
From there I am going to begin compositing some of the photo’s i have taken into some of their backgrounds. One that I am going to concentrate on will be the City Airport image and Pigeons. Both will be explained in later posts.
I am keeping sound in the forefront of my mind, as this is also going to be an important factor, samples of these will be available soon.
Another fantasic inspiration to Deserted Dreams. David Grey encounters a murder and a goblin like creature that lands him in hospital. When he awakes, he realises that all the people around him are see through, and that he is living in a parallel world where abandoned and forgotten things go. David must travel on foot to recover his soul from an unknown entity.
The story becomes very biblical in nature, but its morals lie in the fractures in society and hope can help people rekindle their humanity. But the inital plot of the story addresses the forgotten areas of society which is in a sense is where i want to take deserted dreams. I want to uncover this Realm what is not unlike a dream that exists in reality very late at night.
I have recently stumbled across a facinating series that was made by the BBC in 1996. It covered the story of a man who finds a girl from another realm that exists underneath the daily reality of london town. From what i can gather so far, her name is Door and by assisting her, the protagonist becomes stuck in London Below. On his quest for a way back home, Richard Meyhew stumbles across stories that take place in ‘Nights Bridge’ and characters include The Angel of Islington who is an actual angel. Neverwhere is a parallel universe that breaks down the barriers of time where all its inhabitants are from different era’s in londons history and are homeless.
The surrealist movment lives on in films today, and this is the part that I want to grab onto. From the low buget to the hollywood, artists are presenting us with linear worlds for us to abosrd, but i want the participant to become a part of it, be totally engrossed into the piece. Here are some examples of movies that touch on surrealism:
Eternal Sunshine of a Spotless Mind - Michael Gondry
