The Uncanny Dream
‘The Uncanny’ described by Freud as an experience with the „paradoxical nature of being attracted to, yet repulsed by“ at the same time. This scenario seeks to cover themes like dreams and sleepwalking. While dreaming the control our consciousness has disappears and the instinctive, emotional part of our mind awakes. According to Mark Solms dreams have a different code, it is more primitive and irrational. Human beings have around 150.000 dreams in a lifetime. Many of which are nightmares. Why we dream is still controversial. While Freud theorised that dreams must have a deeper meaning and created a dictionary of dreams, scientist Antti Revonsuo talks about an evolutionary benefit and others think that “The forebrain may be making the best of a bad job in producing even partially coherent dream imagery from the relatively noisy signals sent up to it from the brain stem.“ (Hobson, A. 1977) Proven is, that our brain is much more creative while we are asleep. It leaves much wider associations than in the waking state. During the night a different part of our forebrain is in charge, which floods our mind with countless images and memories. There are various dream zones, which are active in our brain during REM sleep. One of them is just above the ears where the visual thinking evolves. The other one lies immediately behind the eyes. This is the area identified as motivation centre.
Sleepwalking is still one of the most mysterious sleep disturbances. It takes place in deep sleep and sleepwalkers are unable to perceive audiovisual stimuli. One brain area reduced in this process is the prefrontal cortex, which is responsible for attention, decision-making and the sense of justice. The control over the limbic system, which is concerned with the development of emotions is affected as well as the thalamus and the Corpus Striatum, which coordinates usual sequences of movement. (Spiegel Wissen, 4/2009)
For my poetic prothesis I used different materials like Hydromorph and Magic Snow that grow when water is applied to them. They have a wet and disconcerting appearance and touch and an organic shape.
