A experience of dreaming in the Visual Arts

how to dialogue with the dreamlike

Abstract

This study on visual poetics seeks to share dream experiences and their possibilities for experimentation in the field of Visual Arts, integrating both physiological and psychoanalytic concepts, as well as the creative process itself. From a personal and contemporary perspective, it aims to describe an experience with dreams through the creation of works of art, using different media, such as painting and virtual reality. It discusses how Visual Arts can help translate the dimensions of dreaming. Based on the research methodology in Visual Arts, the idea is to transport the spectator into the dream world, providing a certain transposition of an immersive dream experience to a poetics that makes use of immersive technologies. Thus, it seeks to highlight a more tangible view of dreams, as something that is part of lived reality, in another sphere of human experience. The concepts discussed dialogue with Michael Rush’s (2006) reflections on the impact of new technologies on contemporary art, while Oliver Grau (2007) brings the historical perspective of how artistic immersion, from panoramas to virtual reality, has involved the viewer in innovative ways. In turn, Georges Didi-Huberman (1998) questions how the gaze not only interprets the work, but is also challenged by it, highlighting the tensions between the complexity of dreams and the limitations of visual representation. In this context, I discuss how the language of virtual reality painting enters into dialogue with traditional painting, allowing the creation of hybrid works that touch on the subjectivity of dreaming and the dream “self”, while proposing new forms of interaction and participation of the audience with the experience of dreams. Using Sidarta Ribeiro as a reference, I direct the concepts discussed towards a more contemporary look at dreaming and its possibilities for experimentation with immersive technologies.