Re: Dali movies and other thoughts

Lee Hollingworth (lee@giaeb.cc.monash.edu.au)
Sat, 6 May 95 10:36:40 EST

> At 08:46 AM 5/5/95, MEO wrote:
>
> >The model for surrealist creations was the dream. Maybe we can go back
> >there to seek for a surrealist narrative. In a dream, things don't have a
> >logical link, so it seems :).
>
> But is it a lack of logic, or merely an apparent lack of logic? Freud
> obviously seemed to find meaning therein. :)

Meaning does not necessarily imply logic?

In fact, if we trying to model surrealism, we would be doing the
movement a great injustice if we tried to make our virtual surreal
world logical.

> >In my dream, I have
> >often a mandate, a quest, a fear (therfore a story). But that story has
> >it's own logic.
>
> This urgency seems crucial to the dream experience, but difficult to
> recreate in a virtual experience.

If it can be implied in a picture, then it should be possible to
create that sense in a virtual world? If simply by the speed at
which images are created and destroyed, or things happening in the
viewers peripheral visions, or similar. Such would surely add to
a sense of urgency...

> >In the Carnaval structure, I'm the same in and out. Imagine it
> >with the following twist: I change, my actions have consequences (as
> >surrealist may they be). Therefor, my actions are linked and there is a
> >quest. A quest to see/live the results of my actions. That would give
> >suffisant links, basis of story telling with out killing the surrealistic
> >universe.
>
> Would you say that inhabiting the landscape of dreams while awake is
> surralism?

The dream is the surreal experience. The conscious retelling of it
is our futile attempt to recapture it.

> I'm not sure of the answer, but prima facia, it seems at
> least as plausible as the juxtaposition of objects with semantic
> distance" explanation, and gives us a starting point for narrative
> structure as well.

Well unless we have any "automatic programmers" amongst us :^) the
best we will ever be able to do is provide the tools for the user
to create their *own* "automatic" experience...

Lee.
lee@giaeb.cc.monash.edu.au