Surreal Matrix

Surreal Matrix is a group project which I created alongside MA Digital Direction students at the Royal College of Art. It is focused on Surrealism and how Freud’s psychoanalysis and dream analysis - dedicated to the discovery of the human subconscious psyche influenced the movement. Freud said ‘human dreams reveal man’s primal animal desires and fears, which are based on the real thing.’ He therefore advocated the abandonment of logical, controlled images of reality based on empirical memory and the presentation of the world of images in the deep human psyche, attempting to merge the idea of reality with instinct, the subconscious with the experience of dreams.

Human dreams and the subconscious serve as gateways to realms untamed by the digital world's constraints, offering an escape from its universal hold. In the depths of sleep, the mind, freed from the digital exterior, ventures into landscapes clear of censorship, where creativity prospers and imagination reigns supreme. Dreams resolve our subconscious thoughts, creating narratives that are not restricted by algorithms or filters, allowing us to explore the large plain of our inner selves without the imposed boundaries of the online realm. This freedom from the digital confines creates a space for authenticity, offering our minds to roam freely,  free from the limitations of the digital world. In these scapes, the human soul finds peace, embracing the unrestricted view of the subconscious to transcend the confines of a digitised reality.

For this project I was excited to collaborate with a group of then unfamiliar artists who had similar interests to mine while also sharing skills and experience through different ideas and developments. For my contribution I participated with completing primary and secondary research, developing my own account in connection with the theme of Dreams and the Subconscious, realising it in a software I was then unfamiliar with as well as formatting all completed work. I believe as a group we worked well together, even though sometimes we had different ideas and directions we wanted to go in. My final work is a reflection of the fear of the unknown. I often do not remember my dreams, which I consider an issue, as I have recently had experiences recalling my apprehension of the unknown. I fear being in dark spaces, places that make me feel unsafe, states in which I am not myself, I am not present, not conscious. Not knowing what my purpose there is, what I am doing or there to do and how to get out. The dark spaces I have created in my project reflect that fear of the unknown, the unconscious. The picture frames, covered in ice are used as symbols of the infinite memories our minds store and our ability to go in and out of them as we please - while being conscious or not. The spheres, emitting a distant glow, circling around in the void are a motif that relates to perception, memory, learning, thought, and language. All that we experience and perceive without being aware. This combination of images and symbols, displayed using both visual and auditory environments, allow the viewer to experience unconscious cognition, a state where one can feel, do and think but not see.

Medium: New Art City - a virtual gallery & exhibition toolkit for digital art

Software: Blender, REAPER, Premiere Pro

Dimensions of Artwork: 1920x1080

Codecs: H.264, MPEG-4 AAC

Colour profile: HD(1-1-1)

Duration: 02:00

Audio channels: Stereo