Above Reproach

Another induction of lucid dreaming is ‘reality checking’. (Tholey, 1983 p.57) A method in which you assess whether you are in a dream or not. If you notice something abnormal, check your hands and count your fingers, in a dream the hand will be distorted. This is so the method of reality testing becomes habitual to the point you will perform it in dreams, and can become lucid. I began to record a collection of short videos that I would take any time I felt things were unusual, or reminded me of anything I had previously seen in a dream.

I used a JVC Everio GZ-MG330, camcorder only capturing SD, which is abnormal in the current technologically sophisticated progress we have made with the universality of HD and 4K quality, increasingly truer quality to seeing the imagery with our own eyesight. Although the SD camera may seem like an antonym to this, I believe the quality acts truer to how I perceive the dream world. The quality often broken or glitched, I felt the quality of image really mirrored how I perceive the dream world when I become lucid. In HD I feel we see image as true to sight as possible, and although an SD camera may seem like the antonym, it worked as a truer to what I see or experience in a dream sequence.

I used the journals as the basis for the work I was creating. I found it interesting building up a dream memory, and the characters I experienced and memories I had truly felt as though I was becoming a part of this transcendental realm that took me far beyond the laws of physicality in the waking world. 24 I selected dreams I had that had links to others, the same places or themes, and read them in a story telling fashion. However, the listeners role is to not expect or try to make an understanding of the context of what I tell but welcome any feelings and automatically respond to what they are seeing and hearing.

Filming a mix of the waking world and virtual structures, moments of feeling the need to reality check. Bringing forth a collection of moments where I have felt a sentimentalism from my dreams. The sampled sounds of the lighter clicking, the birds chirping, and the story-telling audio, the audience may consider the memories from a past dream of theirs 25 Above Reproach came from my revelation, how I understood my yearning for the freedom the dream world gives me, above any earthly laws and abandoning the burden of my physical body.

When considering how I would render this digital space to make it accessible to an audience, I experimented with recording a first-person orientation of the space, combining the exploration of each room or corridor into a film. One reservation I had with this, however, was whether the film would be more effective if kept strictly digital. Only accessible by link on each viewer’s prospective phone or laptop, keeping this digital film in limbo whereby it never becomes an actualised product that could be presented. Considering the incomprehensible vastness of the dream realm, this was a method of presentation I experimented with.

The audience’s curiosity must be piqued in order for them to interact in such a way that they lean forward, put on the headphones, to see the video. 26 There is distance, curiosity and suppression in the structure of the install. A shape that holds no remarkable features. Only black, with light shining out the peephole at the stop. If this small burst of light piques a viewer’s interest, they can come closer, to examine the video being showed within the structure, and put on the headphones, to have a private, singular experience with above reproach.

Foley, P (1983) Techniques for inducing and manipulating lucid dreams. Percept. Motor Skills 57, 79–90. doi: 10.2466/pms.1983.57.1.79