Thursday, June 01, 2006

keytar

Last night was a really hot and humid night, and I slept with the windows open on top of my comforter with my two cats, Midi and Mister Ham. I dreamt I was in some kind of dance club, dark and moldy, nearly a speakeasy, where everyone (goth-hipsters) had a keytar. As we were dancing, the DJ on the stage started flinging sparks towards us like a tesla coil, and then I was outside, chasing my cats down a slope of grass, but both of them didn't have normal legs, rather, they had these snake-light-like metal tentacles they were running on. The sky was really green and I felt a thunderstorm coming on, so I had to leave the keytar (which was still bouncing around my neck) and carry the cats because I thought their legs would electrocute them when the lightening hit. I woke up and we were all snuggles in a sweaty bunch and rain was dripping in my window.

Andrea, Los Angeles
http://boycatbird.com

Wednesday, May 31, 2006

o&Oww%o!!+_ooo?

now i remember i had this dream a long while ago when i was a teenager. i was looking up the starry sky from the window of my 2nd floor room when i saw the UFO zooming across the sky.

the next moment there was an alien floating right in front of me in his space suits with his space gun in his hand.

the alien grabbed the back of my head and shoved his space gun on my head. the gun was actually a brain blender and it started blending my brain.

i went NOOOooOooOoooOoo0o00000/0000#oo?o#Oxo@*&ooo!o&Oww%o!!+_ooo?oo"?oo0oOOo oo o0ooo00!! ! !!! !?!!!!

the next moment i woke up and realized there was my tiny vibration alarm clock vibrating under my pillow.

with the well blended brain i wondered. when did my brain make up the whole story? before the alarm started vibrating or after vibrating?

Takehito Etani

Wednesday, May 17, 2006

fastened by old leather bindings

i think that every one of my dreams is somehow related to technology -- it's an obsession, you see. here's one that i had the other night. i don't know if it's as funny as the one i had the night before about para-sailing behind a helicopter that was crashing into the ocean (piloted by my boss), but i think it's more applicable.

it's a pathetic and comical scene: a pair of iguana-like lizards trapped in a pen, with electrodes all over their bodies, fastened by old leather bindings. there is a single scientist observing the pair. his goal is apparently to perform dinosaur behavior studies vicariously through these lizards. he has on his right hand some kind of tyrannosaurus puppet which casts a shadow on the lizards and is meant to elicit a terrified reaction from them, but which is completely ineffectual: the lizards continue to shuffle about, completely unaware of their captor. the scientist looks on and sighs, baffled at the failure of what he considers a flawless experiment.

Chad Dombrova

Sunday, May 14, 2006

bull-shit to holy-shit

I am very pleased to have people reporting tales both media-related and non; most of which are much more exciting than any of my own. My next inclination is to stage re-enactments of the dreams, and the following would be a top candidate for such a project:

I had this dream which i recall only in odd fragments, but I'll try to make it coherent. I dreamed i was at a press conference called by coca cola in response to criticism from labor activists around their recent policies in columbia. to placate the activists they sent, as spokespeople, 3 large rat-like figures, who stood about waist-high. They wore their hair in long braids at the back and bonnets, and long smocks. they carried baskets with long handles full of spices or other farm-grown things. They looked like some kind of characters from lord of the rings or some other fantasy film. they carried themselves with quiet dignity, like quakers or something, the intended effect being to convey a sense of humble origins, as if Coke were deeply connected with the agrarian roots of their (non-unionized) workers.

the audience saw through this transparent ploy immediately and began heckling the rats, chanting "bull-shit, bull-shit" as soon as they walked in the room. this went on for a while until the rat nearest me began to faint (at this point my empathy for the rats grew, and I felt torn between my commitment to the labor activists and my sympathy for the unsuspecting rats), and finally he crashed to the floor and began dissolving, his skull crashing in and his fur shriveling up. there was obviously evidence of some kind of incredibly destructive virus or something.

the audience began chanting "holy-shit, holy-shit" and a sense of panic rose in the room. then I woke up.

Sam Binkley - New York, New York

Tuesday, May 09, 2006

an isometric view

I wanted to share some thoughts about my dreams with you:
In 1999 I was playing the MMORPG Ultima Online a lot, like 150-200 hours a month.
After a while I started dreaming in the same perspective than the games graphics were. That means I saw me and my surroundings in an isometric view, a top-down-view with myself in the center. I cannot remember any stories of the dreams, just that it wasn't limited to medieval atmospheres.

Kind regards,
Walter Rafelsberger

her whole look is overly photoshopped

Hello electric sleep,

I've been keeping a journal of remembered dreams on and off for the last several years. Went back and found some electronic references:

6/19/03:
With a group of people - involved in some sort of time machine - installed a filter made of human flesh underneath a stainless steel grate on the concave inside of a wide arched doorway. Had to time travel in two parts: after the installation returned to pre-order the steel grate.

9/7/03:
At an exit interview for the Vermont Studio Center, set up in some type of gym with booths that you move through. Each booth had someone that asked you questions about your time there: which individuals you most enjoyed handing out with, or had romantic attachments to, etc., but instead of answering you simply entered an enclosed space with some printer/scanner/copier type thing that gives some visual equivalent of your answer. I go through the booth and then leave with some photocopies and head out to clean out my studio. Then I'm in someplace like the basement of my childhood house on Church St, Dubois, Pa, looking in a rusty cabinet that contains 2 half drunk bottles of liquor, and I contemplate whether or not I'll have enough to make it through my stay. Later I go back to the gym and found that I've left some photocopies behind. They are arranged in a pattern similar to the queen of hearts in a deck of cards.

2/2/04:
I'm shopping in a 2nd hand boutique - looking up a spiral stair case at some shirts hung on the railing. There is this red shirt that reminds me of the shirt that the clerk is wearing. Someone pardons themself as they pass on the narrow stairwell. Then, I'm in Adamson's Corner Store, DuBois, PA, looking for blank recordable CDs, thinking about Bob Dylan's Blood on the Tracks and I'm living with Amber again.

5/7/06:
I am part of some small wind ensemble led by Zach. I am to play an oboe at a concert, except we never get a chance to practice. I am to introduce the ensemble before the concert starts. Zach comes late, as I'm standing on stage making the introduction. I file down to the first row of seats and Zach hands me a recorder, showing me how to blow a note, which I do easily, but then I realize that I don't know any of the fingerings. As the ensemble begins to play and I and mimicking fingerings without actually blowing any notes, a woman in the audience stands up, who is Zach's aunt or something. She has green hair and an orange blazer and her skin is pasty and her whole look is overly photoshopped. She tells me she knows someone close to me. It then becomes apparent the we must move onto the stage and I am afraid that the audience will know that I'm not really playing the recorder.

sleep well,
jeremy

dragon ballz

My friend Helen's dream is not about technology, but if animation characters invade one's subconscious then by all means it fits the rubric of this project.

our stars must be aligned or something... i have been meaning to write you because about a week ago i had a dream about you. you came to boston and you put on a play where all your actors were dressed up like Dragon Ball Z, which to be honest i know nothing about. i guess the images, must be in my
head from advertising, magazines, tv... i really didn't even know how to pronounce it and when outside of the dream i told sonia about how i dreamed about you i called it dragon ballz, like in plural and it was somewhat embarrassing. anyhow you dated the lead dragon ball z actor. yes so the other thing was that you got me, sonia, justin and kristin to put these really big sticks on our feet and told us we had to skate around the room as if it were a frozen pond. all i really remember was that i was awful at it and sonia was good. it was a fun dream that you directed for me and made me smile for a few days... i had been meaning to tell you this since last week and your post prompted me.

Saturday, May 06, 2006

the year the internet exploded

Jacob Ciocci sent this post from a pitstop in London:

I have had too many dreams to count like this . . . but the classic I always tell dates back to 1996, "the year the internet exploded". I was living in a dascomb dorm room at Oberlin College with my good friend from high school, David. My computer was positioned directly behind my head as I slept. I was just learning about the internet and in general was having my mind blown daily because now I was on a networked campus for the first time and hard drives were getting so BIG. At night I would dream of debugging javascript from within a dark terminal window. The night I would like to share however, I do not remember the dream. but David does. David walked into the room and I began talking to him, in my sleep. "David, come here" I said. David approached the bed and I asked "what is that in your hand?" And David said, "a toothbrush". Then I said "double click on the toothbrush icon, and that will take you to a popup window which should tell you how to brush your teeth."

About 8 years later, David recounted a dream to me that is just as interesting. We were on tour with our band, Extreme Animals, and were playing shows with another band from the west coast called "eats tapes". They are our rival fake-rave west coast band friends/enemies. David had a dream that someone in their band decided to, as a prank, create a fake Extreme Animals band page on myspace (since we did not have one). In the dream the myspace page was so poorly designed and the content was so embarassing that it was the perfect "prank". Soon after this dream occured, the rival band, Eats Tapes, did exactly this--they made a fake myspace page for us, which was pretty horrible in every way.

yr spirit is time-reversed to yr body

With much delight at the serendipity, (we were having these dreams at the same time!) I am reblogging an entry from the blogzine of Antonio Lopez. It's very fun and running on Word Press, which is more than I can say for myself here in the Google ghetto. You should definitely check it out. Antonio, come on down and let's go to the DC show together, ok?

You know those anxiety dreams when you run in place, you can’t dial the correct number, or you can’t remember the pass code that will get you out of your slumbering rut? Well, this morning I had a dream in which I was trying to buy Sonic Youth tickets on-line and all I got were endless pop-up windows. Thing is, I had set my alarm so I would be the first to buy Sonic Youth tix for their CBGBs show on June 13. When I awoke and actually tried to get tickets at 10:00 a.m. (believe me, I clicked as soon as the buy tickets icon appeared), within three minutes they were not available and my shopping cart kept saying “empty.” What the fuck! For two years I’ve been trying to see SY in NY and have yet to successfully get a ticket for a single damn show. You have no idea how this stretches my efforts towards cultivating nonattachment. This is as unskilled as it gets for me. I’m pissed! So please, anyone out there with the inside line, please, please get me in!!!!!!! (Whine, whine, whine)

apology

this is not a dream (yet) but I am having some anxiety about having sent out the e-mail announcement about this project with all the addressses in the CC, not blind carbon-copied. oops. sorry about that.

dreams kick ass, for better or worse

this just in from Tiffany Sum:
TRUE STORY happened a few days ago:
15 hours before my first professional 50-minute presentation. i was 80% done. tempted by the hotel cable tv, i half fell asleep with my laptop on my stomach, lucid dreaming hearing the Simple Life ramble on... In a big wide yet shallow hall, unexpectedly filled with audience seats, I found myself not prepared to speak about my work, my research, my teaching, my "deal"... I struggled in front of 50 heads
with white background mumbling. I pretended the connection from my laptop to the projector was not working right. well, not quite, just my presentation is not done. I couldn't show it. I managed to rough out some YouTube clips that have nothing to do with my art practices... the laptop went slower and slower... in the end, it crashed without apparent reasons.... I tumbled and and sweated some more. People started leaving: it was 20 minutes past my scheduled presentation time.... worst sweat in my life. I forced myself to wake up at 4.30 am in the hotel room. Sit up, re-do my presentation, precisely, delicately, practiced and practiced. 8 am I was ready to meet up with the committee head. My real presentation was never better. dreams kick ass, for better or worse.

Friday, May 05, 2006

when they spoke it was only through text bubbles

Tyler Sutton is also a Pittsburgh friend:
when i was growing up i used to love to play final fantasy II on the super nintendo.

after playing it days on end, when i went to sleep all
my dreams featured the little guys with big heads and
little bodies. when they spoke it was only through text bubbles.

this went on for a while.

an aside: that game was cool because at the end they
let you fly to the moon in a giant blue whale spaceship.

I had programmed myself into a corner

David Tinapple is a very cool artist currently at Carnegie Mellon. He writes:
Once when I was working in a multimedia job, programming interactive CD-ROM's. I had a big project that involved some Director programming that was a little over my head... I had programmed myself into a corner. Well, one night I had the most vivid dream that actually involved writing code. I woke up with a good recollection of what I had just done in my dream. I wrote it down and hurried off to work where I tried to do again what I had done in the dream... and it worked! I was totally shocked that I was programming in my dream.

This has happened since then with other digital tools, but that first time was amazing.

Media Dreamcatcher

This morning (a time when I start to remember my dreams) I dreamt that one of my students had found and added me on Friendster, and that I felt compelled to delete my account, as well as the MySpace account that I only have to stay visible with a couple of non-Friendsters. I think I regretted having to let go of Friendster, but realized it was for the best. And of course I was reminded of Cory Archangel's "Friendster suicide" project last year, which really wasn't such a big sacrifice since he was just making a spectacle of his navigation to the now hip MySpace as his Web 2.0 homebase. The fact that I am having dreams about the internet is disconcerting but I'm trying instead to see the humor in it. Last fall when I first started teaching full time I was having intense dreams about clicking and navigating on the Mac desktop, wading through a sea of Photoshop and Quark windows and palette options. I still want to do a performance from this. Though I think the CPU/Proust performance some folks did recently was a pretty good idea, mine would be strictly user interface and software, as long as I can make sure it doesn't turn into a big promo for Adobe. I think in fact it would be just the opposite.

I also dreamed that I got married to an ex of mine, who I learned from the grapevine is actually getting married sometime later this year. My dreams are usually simple to analyze, and I trace this one to a couple of moments of media consumption: Yesterday I watched a episode 8 of season 4 of the HBO series Six Feet Under. The details are not important but basically one of the main characters, Nate, is getting back together with his ex Brenda, and there is this sense that this time it will work out in spite of, or rather, because of their messy past attempt at a relationship. Brenda has just betrayed a perfectly stable relationship with a cute tuba player and we can see that a return to Nate is in the works (why else would they have included her this whole time in the storyline?). I am in the midst of watching this series for the first time, an endeavor I started last summer at the recommendation of my grad advisor... curses on my time!

I had not checked Friendster for a while until yesterday, and I also blame this morning's dreams on this recent log-in. I considered changing my About me status, which states: "not getting married. not having a baby". I feel it's a bit hostile, given the fact that many of my peers are having babies and getting married. But that of course is the point, to announce clearly that I am no where near this kind of status and do not care to be. Or do I?

During a recent visit with a friend who is both having a baby and getting married in the coming year, I found myself compelled to make reference to various television programs as they related to things that came up in "real life", and felt embarressed about this. I watched some TV as a kid, The Cosby Show and Northern Exposure but did not embrace it again in this water-cooler-socially-acceptable style until after college. I'll be the first to admit that my increased consumption of electronic media is a sign of too much alone time. I would be better off reading more books. And so, with this story I start this blog, wondering how many others have had media-infiltrated dreams...

Infiltration

Have you had dreams (in the literal sense, while sleeping) that featured electronic media: internet, television, video games, radio, mobile phones, etc?

Maybe you were smooching Jerry Seinfeld or maybe you found yourself confronted with a shocking email during a dream. Was it is creepy? Is it comforting? Send your stories of media-infiltrated dreams to me and I will post them on this blog: sleep.electric[at]gmail.com