Lucid Dream
2022
Moving images
Inspiration
When I was a undergraduate student from Mainland China studying in Hong Kong, I was drowning in the river of the information from the mass media of the two spaces. Although Hong Kong and Mainland China are only separated by the natural border, the Shenzhen River, the two places are still estranged historically, geographically, and culturally.
In this case, my social identity in this relationship is lost in the Shenzhen River, and I would like to escape to find a solution. I seem like I do not belong to either side, and I am struggling with the opposite information from mass media in Hong Kong and Mainland China. Thus, I would like to express my personal experience and subjective emotion in the video works and consider it a lucid dream. I try to refer to the lucid dream mechanism and the utilisation of an SD card as the metaphor to reflect and interpret my self-identity issue through this exploration.
Logic as mechanism experiment
Carrier:
Brain=storage space=SD card
Materials:
Memory/Consciousness= Clip in the SD card
Period:
Rapid-eyes-movement (REM)= Plug in to computer and view
Processing methodology:
Electrical brain primacy =choose clips to edit
Presenting results:
Lucid Dream in brain - The Moving Images on screen
For better processing in this experiment: I chose one SD card and regarded it as the dreaming brain. On my SD card, there are a lot of clips from the spaces in Hong Kong and Mainland China, and I try to put my self-identity experience and related concept into the editing video. I subjectively choose the clips I want to edit into one video and make effects and compositions on it, making a surreal story to create a lucid dream. I prefer to utilize high contrast color and low resolution to make the lucid dream more intense and surreal. Along with the narrative and sound composition, I would like the audience to get absorbed in the scene psychologically. It is an experiment from the cinematography and dream perspective to reveal my reflection, which is a new try for me and still a lot of improvement.
For more details: Lucid dream is a conscious dream and contains an instance of self-awareness during a dream state. Sub-consciousness is the material of dreams (Storehouse of all experiences, impression, etc.) This is the dream that seems real even when strange things happen. It was not until people woke up that they realized it was just a dream.
Narrative
These are two places,
separated by a river,
which has existed for 25 years.
I was released into this river three years ago,
and the man who released me said
he would bring me back when I was well enough.
Before, I lived in a fish tank.
I heard that the other side was very busy,
which was very different from this side.
Living in this river,
I could see a lot of things along the banks through the refraction of water.
The two places are very different indeed,
and not the version I heard in the fish tank.
One day, I saw two boats arguing on the river.
One boat is called SU Jiayi,
and the other SO Ka Yee.
One of the boats said, "How ungrateful you are! How can you live without our gentry!"
The other boat said, "How ignorant you are! And very no quality! Don't come here if you can! We don’t welcome you!"
I'm scared.
The vibration of the boats made me want to get out of here.
They kept arguing, but I knew that one of them would pick me up finally.
I didn't want to hear them arguing!
I wanted to go to the ocean!
I heard that It's a land of free minds.
I tried to escape,
hiding my identity,
and I was here!
But it was getting harder and harder to breathe.
I just realized that
I'm a freshwater fish.
·From the perspective of narrative, this is a video implying the psychology as the artists' unconscious mind, reflecting in the lucid dream. The narrative is based on the artist's self-experience in the identity issue. In the narrative, the fish was trapped in the flowing water of consciousness and mindedness and would like to find a utopia to escape. In contrast, the fish failed and realized this place has never existed for an existence living in this system (the attribute for this fish, a freshwater fish).