Salon 57 // Nightmares

Hello, hello, hello, and welcome everyone to our Techspressionism virtual salon. Today's subject that we will be talking about and a few is actually nightmares. Previous salons have been about various other subjects that are either near and dear, or just controversial topics like in a tease and like. But today we're talking about nightmares, which was a kind of democratic voted topic to talk about not dreams, but specifically nightmares. And so we're going to be talking about you know art and showing art about some of our well from some of our artists that have you know, have that as a subject.

Davonte Bradley

If this is your first time here, generally speaking, this is kind of a similar to like a round table kind of discussion. Where you know people can chat. They can chime in and share what they wish to share for a couple of minutes, and we'll have a short discussion about it, and we'll just carry on the discussion until it reaches whatever point feels good right and then from there we'll see what happens I'd like to introduce myself. I'm Davonte Bradley. I've been moderating these salons for, I guess, about 2 years now almost. And joining me are the wonderful various text. Pressionists. That have joined our growing community.

Davonte Bradley

We have Colin Goldberg, who kind of coined the term and helped kind of kick all of this off. And just a lot of people have been in and around for a long time, like Patrick Lichty and Victor Roz. Renata Michael. I could go through everybody, but that would be a lot of time. But anyway, Renata, our Instagram curator. Got to go. Yeah, I was going to kind of maybe sorry.

Davonte Bradley

Anyway. But if you are, if it's your first time joining us, I want to do a special welcome for you. I'm glad you're able to join in. We do these every 2 to every 2 weeks, and generally the format for the last couple has been the same where it's just a general subject that we've been talking about and sharing art about. So I think we have what Carla, who is a professor at Nyu.

Davonte Bradley

Hello, see you. We are that's a new face. And who else is new here that I do not recognize. I don't list. Well, if you're new welcome. All right. So let's kick things off here. Nightmares. So I personally have not actually experienced nightmares for several years. I remember having nightmares all the time in childhood, probably because high stress environments, lot of changing going on, probably very directly into that. But what replaced the nightmares was something called sleep paralysis, which is a little bit adjacent to that.

Davonte Bradley

And I want to say I the distinction between a dream and a nightmare. I think it comes down to the general emotion involved with the experience right. So dreams we think of as you know they're pleasant, you know they're playful or just weird like, Oh, that was an interesting experience. I don't know what to make of that. But that was an interesting experience right that's dreams for the most part nightmares. On the other hand, tend to.

Davonte Bradley

Kind of maybe traumatize us in some ways. Scare us invoke a lot of negative emotions. So it's the negative side of the subconscious doing whatever or whatever subconscious. This is trying to manifest at that time. We're trying to process and my art never had really gone through anything like that. Mine is mostly focused on sleep paralysis, which does evoke a lot of same kinds of emotions. That a nightmare would generally like fear anxiety and all of that.

Davonte Bradley

But to college an actual nightmare I can't say but I'll get into that a bit later. But if anybody wants to take the floor feel free, Michael.

Hey, thanks, Donald. Yeah, yeah, when Vernada suggested this topic last time. I was really enthusiastic about it. So thanks for data. So there's a couple things here for me that I think are really relevant, especially from an artist standpoint. And I've got a couple of perspectives. One is you would mention that sense of fear. And so for me dreams are very psychological and spiritual. And the nightmares aspect to this is something that a number of elders up in Canada that I had time to spend with. They had mentioned that for a lot of medicine, people and folks following spiritual paths oftentimes have very special kinds of nightmares. They're very emotional. They're times for stories that challenge them and confront them to make profound changes in their life to bring in new things. And oftentimes nightmares get repeated until you're able to transform and go through the experience without ending the nightmare and waking up and not being able to resolve anything.

Michael Pierre Price

So that's kind of where I'm coming from on the art that I would like to share. And hopefully, one of my favorite sayings or quotes is from Dune, that fear is the mind killer. And so I put the full quote here on this image, because I think it's really relevant to us as people and humans, and especially as artists as well. I think expressing the dark side of things can feel sometimes sensational. But for me, like I said, this is more of a psychological and a spiritual set of images that I wanted to share.

Michael Pierre Price

So. The environment is always something you had mentioned Davo fantastical kinds of environments. And oftentimes there is a sense for me, at least personally, like there's. It's somewhat familiar, but there's this foreboding element added on top of things and. I, to me, Francisco Goya was a real, real strong pull for me when I created some of these. Images. I created a number of these. With the idea of the soul eater. That there's the dark man that I've talked about in some previous.

Michael Pierre Price

Salons that we've had. And. It's the sense of atmosphere, the sense of fluidity of things changing of. Of feeling off balanced. For me is something that's really relevant in nightmares. And that. It's the environment sucking you in. And there's just this very, to me, all encompassing sense. For my nightmares.

Michael Pierre Price

And then there's the fear that potentially I might get transformed into something else that I'm not sure about what that might be. And so I in my nightmares I oftentimes go through very strong emotional feelings about things. I think that confrontation of the shadow and the light is oftentimes a very powerful element within nightmares for myself.

Michael Pierre Price

That I know like I can kind of see something, but yet there's something hidden and it's that hidden thing that both both attracts me and repels me at the same time. It's like I'm drawn to it, but I'm terrified of it at the same time. And then the final. The final thing is. The dark man that I've talked about before is just this presence this entity this unknowing thing of what it might be. And the thing that strikes me is eyes.

Michael Pierre Price

If I look into the eyes of the enemy or the fantastical being that's about to suck me in or take over, and that's something that's really powerful for me. And in the in the imagery that I wanted to share today with that I thought was relevant to nightmares. And the last the last thing for me relates to what I was talking about with the elders that talking about the confrontation. And so for me here, this is kind of the image of the soul eater that's staring right at me, and I'm right at the precipice of am I gonna make it, or am I gonna be destroyed or sucked in? And this very last image is kind of the final like microsecond.

Michael Pierre Price

Sometimes before I wake up if you can see on the left side of the image there's like this arm that's being sucked into sort of the skeletal creature there. And then this right there at the end of the hand is like a fetish of me. Of my. My mind, my heart, my spirit, my psychological state that I'm trying to keep away from the soul eater, you know, completely absorbing me. And typically that's usually when I wake up, or if I in some cases where I've had some kind of transformation that has happened. So anyway, that's what I wanted to share and I appreciate being able to show you some of my imagery today. Thank you, everybody. Thank you. Michael. Yeah, thanks.

Michael Pierre Price

Let the with the I thing, though, though, though I may not experience nightmares too much anymore. They're a very prominent feature of my sleep process hallucinations. Surprisingly, like if when I actually get around to showing what I'm talking about like I tried to replicate what I would see as best I could. But I do not yet have the artistic skills to depict that well enough yet. That's kind of why I've been like putting it off for years. It's like I want to show this as best I can. But at present my skills don't make a lot of sense. So I've just been putting it off and you know but I'll show you what guys would I have a bit later. Thank you.

Michael Pierre Price

All right. I think next up we have Renata. No, I'm not spending today. I'm chilling I'm kicking back. Oh, sorry. We're not. Renata. Thanks,

Davo. Sorry I'm going to show a short animation that I made in 2,021. The title of it is Prokofiev's cave and it's about losing your mind, losing your identity, and losing your ability to smell or to speak. And the soundtrack was created by a musician named Kulture Owl. Who I collaborated with very rarely do I do this, but he wanted to work with me on this piece, and you'll hear him singing in gibberish, and it's a language he invented for this work, and it adds to the horror of the piece because you really don't know what he's saying. It's made up.

Renata Janiszewska

We have a faceless voiceless. Can't smell. Has a whole. It's a little bit of a there's a nod to the Belgian surrealist, who named a great where you see him wearing a bowler hat, which is a motif that Magritte used fairly frequently to depict average man man in the gray suit. And you also see the feet of animals with scaly legs and cloven hooves.

Renata Janiszewska

There's snakes. There are trees that are directly out of a Caspar David Friedrich painting. He's a German romantic artist, and the main character gets beaten up by a milky substance, and in the last it's which represents a disembodied ghost figure. And in the last bit he gets disintegrated. So I'm gonna share my screen.

Renata Janiszewska

Here we go. ¶¶ Sistah Sistah Melo Thank you. Thank you. It's incredible. The music definitely does help play into the whole foreboding, ominous, kind of anxiety-filling. Yeah. Does anybody else have anything else to say? Well, there's definitely comments in the chat saying it's amazing. Excellent work. Yeah, I agree with that.

Renata Janiszewska

Now, I would like to know, you said the figure in the story or nightmare is being assaulted by a white fluid, right? Was there any significance to, well, I'm sure there probably is, but what is the significance to that specifically? Well, the fluid is a phantasmagorical being that doesn't have a body. So it exists in the form of floating particles.

Renata Janiszewska

And it's basically standing for those ghosts that we see in our worst nightmares. The word phantasm in French is ghost. Gotcha. Thank you. I see going to the chat real quick for one moment. Amazing. Yep. Amazing. Amazing. Scary. Yep. All right. So I think I think you did capture those feelings very well for people.

Renata Janiszewska

Or at least the feelings communicated well enough. So thank you again, Renat. All right, moving right

Along. We have Colin. Hey, what's up guys? So yeah, I didn't think at first that I had anything relevant, but just sort of before it started, this piece popped into my head that is an old piece from graduate school from 2006. 2006 and it's a short audio visual piece and I was definitely going through some stuff at that time. I'm sure Patrick can attest to that. He was he was right, right there with me, and definitely you know dealing with some battling some demons personal things going on. And this piece is sort of an experiment experimental video piece that I shot in my apartment and it's almost like a little sort of fever dream but it has it has I feel like a nightmarish quality to it so let me see if I could just share that particular window it's about two minutes Oh, my God.

Colin Goldberg

That's it. Nice. Yeah. Yeah. That was a lot to keep track of too. It's a modern nightmare. For sure. It's the nightmare of urbanization and loss of cohesion and vanishing into nothingness type thing. Spooky. Something going down the drain. Yeah, it's a waking nightmare. It's a waking nightmare, the type of nightmare that people live on subways, you know, homeless individuals.

Colin Goldberg

Abide. Anyone else get the vibe of running out of time with the constant ticking? Oh, yeah, I get that now. Yeah. I think it's fascinating just how the idea of fear can manifest in a lot of different ways, because fear is different for everyone. Some people are afraid of death. Some people are afraid of spiders.

Colin Goldberg

But it always kind of produces this the same kind of visceral reactions. It produces the same kind of. Oh, am I hearing myself? Got double feedback? But yeah, no, it's just that fear can manifest itself in so many different ways and have so many different interpretations to each individual person. And then to see that fear kind of represented visually through a piece of art or animations or video even, that's a whole other. Other layer to it, a whole other layer of interpretation too.

Colin Goldberg

So that's all I have to add about that. But thank you, Colin. You said that was during one year in grad school? Yeah, that was from 2006. And it was shot on a little five megapixel camera. And I was playing around with a lot of my work deals with the idea of the gesture. So I was creating these sort of gestural.

Colin Goldberg

Marks that became masks that were tweened in Flash. So the video was composited in Flash and then sort of a bunch of other stuff at the time that Apple Final Cut Suite with Soundtrack Pro and stuff like that. That's where a lot of those audio samples came from. But a lot of that work from grad school was really just sort of experimenting. But it was definitely a snapshot of a mind in. In. In under stress.

Colin Goldberg

Yeah. Carla said she was she. She loved to use Flash in the early 2000s. Oh, my gosh. Late 90s, early 2000s Flash was my thing. It was my bread and butter for teaching, too. I don't know if anybody else, but and yeah, I made a lot of stuff with Flash. And then the iPhone killed Flash. Adobe animate.

Colin Goldberg

I had a conversation about obsolescence, right? Totally ties right back to that. That's a nightmare to obsolescence. It's true. All right. OK, I think next up we have.

Susan. I think. OK. I don't think. I'm. Sorry, I was a little late. I was in transit, but I'm going to share my screen. I'm. Well, maybe I should talk first, but that's all right. OK. I'm going to. Are you seeing that? Pandemic. Yeah. So I, I, too, thought that I didn't have work to fit the theme. And then, like, as often happens, I began to realize, like, it doesn't have to be whatever my first response was to the word. I don't have to literally have to have work that. I don't have to literally have to have work that. Embodies nightmare. Anyway, so I. I was glad that I did that. And.

Susan Detroy

So I. Thought about it actually quite a bit yesterday and then realized that. I had a whole body of work. A lot of work that I created during the pandemic, like in 2020, that revolved revolved around. My biking and wearing a mask. And so I went through. My files and I found. About 19 pieces. That. And the reason. Another piece of this information is that. I'm glad that you mentioned Devo about. Childhood experiences. Because as a child. As a child, I experienced.

Susan Detroy

A lot of. Nightmares. For a number of years and was actually. Medicated and taken to the doctor and. It. It has. It did influence my life. In terms of. Trigger fears around. Events in the world. I was responding to, I. Got. Terrified about alien invasion as a child. And. I couldn't. Anyway. So, but I. Rel aver navigate tar remains una fresca da huge preocupaciones sobre humans ¿ influenza world en medio de toda esta pandemia se alimentan muchas preocupaciones sobre Santa madre What happened for me? Where did this matter happen for us And when did this matter happen for us Well that happened so when the pandemic happened a lot of that fear happened for me which was it could happen for people And I began so I'm going to go through these and what I wanted to say was that the mask for me became a way for me to somewhat control the stimulated fear of a pandemic and cause hypia that some disaster was going to happen, that my world was going to blow up in some way, like childhood mind kind of thing.

Susan Detroy

So I'm gonna show you pieces that I created in 2020 that had to do with wearing a mask and using my, my usual self-portraiture, self-reflective viewpoint and communicating about what the world felt like to me. And then of course, using the apps and interpretation with my iPhone and iPad that I have done for about six or seven years.

Susan Detroy

As an artist, I feel pretty driven to show the same thing over and over and over, which many of us do. Multiple interpretations of the same event or same thing. You know, it could be a parrot or it could be masks. So I was doing that. And I'm actually really glad, this is one of my favorite ones actually.

Susan Detroy

I was really glad to have the idea put in my head to pull these pieces together. I hadn't thought of doing that before, and I'm probably going to, put them into a video with some sound. I think it would be great to have some sound with them. Maybe the last one. No, there's more. Yeah. As you can see, it's me, sunglasses, bike helmet, mask. I did a lot of that.

Susan Detroy

There we go. Thank you for sharing your vision with us today. Thank you so much for joining us today. Thank you so much for joining us today. It gave me an opportunity to look at some work I hadn't really focused on before and see them as a cohesive body. Thanks a lot. Thank you. Yeah. Yeah. I'll say definitely the pandemic, even though we're still technically in it still. Yeah, still very much fear and anxiety surrounding what's actually going to happen at when we're at the end of this or if we even get to the end of this what even looks like, because two years in at this point and things are better but they keep kind of like a wave. But like we start to kind of ease out of it and then something spikes and then anxieties go back up and yeah, I think I also appreciate the opportunity to have a time to put those two things together in my mind I hadn't completely sink them in my mind that my nightmare childhood times with the pandemic I mean I knew I was raised in the pandemic.

Susan Detroy

But I. But I. It's good to say it out loud to people in a group. Thanks for the opportunity to do that, to share that. Thank you for sharing. You're welcome. Take care. All right, you too, Susan. I just want to make a quick remark that some of those frames reminded me of scenes from a Japanese manga that you're illustrating your life and you see glimpses of the figure, as you do often in those graphic novels.

Susan Detroy

I'm not as familiar with that, but thank you, Renata. I want some nightmare fuel. Look up Junji Ito and his work. He's a horror manga artist and it's powerful. I'll say that. If you type it in the chat, that'd be great. Yeah, sure. I've got the cat t-shirt. Nice. But he's definitely well known for very nightmarish imagery. He's very much known for that.

Susan Detroy

I find the ones that are photographic really resonated for me. They felt really real. I think there were a couple of black and white ones that were just distorted a little bit less, but they really resonated. Thanks, Lee. Anybody else have anything they want to add before we move on? I just wanted to say, Susan, I really enjoyed seeing your pieces and I kept thinking about the mask worn in war.

Susan Detroy

And of course, we were in a war-type situation with a virus, but I kept thinking of war between your glasses almost seeming like goggles and your face. And I think that's just what it is. I think it's just the mask wearing and the mask connecting brought that other meaning up as well as the pandemic.

Susan Detroy

So thank you for sharing. I think Patrick has his hand up. Do you, Patrick, on purpose? I said, I mean, when the cue comes up, I've got two or three things. Okay. All right. All right. Yeah. I think Roz is actually going to be up next. I guess you can go after Roz. Sure. All right. Sounds good. Oh, Cynthia, did you want to present or did you have something to add?

Susan Detroy

I'd like to present if there's time. Cynthia, go ahead. I mean, I don't know if there was a cue, but I jumped in kind of late. Dabo, I'll leave that. Well, I jumped in late too, Roz. Oh, you did? There you go. Okay. See, this is what happens when everyone's trying to be kind. Well, I know, really. I didn't know if there was a sign up for this or not. Was there, Dabo? Not that I saw. It's pretty much pretty open. Well, Cynthia, how about I go? I'll try to be quick and somebody will blow a whistle when I start talking too much, which does happen sometimes. Is that all right with you? Fine. I'll keep you on a tight leash. There you go. Okay.

Susan Detroy

Yeah. Mine.

Okay. Hold on. Let me go share. Can everybody see my screen? Wow. Well, that's certainly not mine. Michael Pierre Price and I, we always have this connection, but you know, we didn't talk about this before we did it, but Goya, you know, I was thinking nightmare. No, that's not my stuff at all, which I've heard from a lot of you saying the same thing. No. But when I started thinking about it, I started thinking about my gun series that just kind of came out of me in like 2016 through 18. And, you know, I don't own a gun. And people are like, Roz, why are you drawing guns? And I kept thinking of the word when I saw the word nightmare I thought you know a nightmare can be something where things have become, you know, powerful or beautiful or sanitized things that are destroying us destroying our children destroying our society, and when I think about the guns, I mean my guns people but they're beautiful.

Roz Dimon

But nightmares can be I think that's where art I love the paradox in art where it can be about beauty because of the marks like a jenny seville where you know it's beautiful but it's ugly too and you know I just want to start with this boy it's called saturn devouring his to his son and in some ways our technology you know with our guns I'm just going into my kalashnikov which I showed you know in the expressionist show this summer I mean this is I started doing these pieces and I can kind of go in them but they're not they're not really very these are not my high res I put this together really fast but they are very high res and they go huge like I'm looking into the belly of the beast and yet sometimes I would I would listen to kind of strange dichotomous music like christmas or something syrupy and sweet and I'd be looking at another image of a gun and each one of these this is going in close-up this is going into the barrel of that kalashnikov I'm moving right along but I think we are in a bit of a nightmare yes ourselves with what's happening with guns I mean this latest at the nightclub and you know it's still ongoing this is called I believe air sport gun like oh isn't it fun I remember I remember going to a marketplace you know on a saturday in louisiana and there were just tons and tons of plastic guns I'm not talking about squirt guns but guns that can really hurt and kill in huge barrels and I went back and did this piece and this is looking really close up inside the barrel of that gun you can see how high res these are it says gather up the kids we're going for a ride and that's right like right in this little blue area and those little dots that's a close-up so just going right along spooky snub nose I mean guns are they're beautiful evil things and maybe it's stretching the term nightmare but I kind of felt like it relates this is called I'm afraid of the rainbow lincoln it's the gun that shot abraham lincoln and I think some of you know I've seen it before but I think it's a really cool gun I've done a whole series of abraham lincoln I've been having an affair with a dead man and that and here's a close-up of that and just the extreme tension and stuff going on and a gun before the poor crazed person who fires it does so and the person who dies and how it changes our lives this is called the quiet woodsman and here's the close-up of the where the gun goes you know out and there's a lot of frenzy and stuff going on in these I remember this piece particularly it's called happy day who's praying for me and I read about this poor person I saw I mean I sound like I'm not for the victims of course but I also feel for the deranged individual who does these acts in such a desperate way I mean killing your own people you know for no reason like he went into a movie theater this was the gun that was used and I think it was in colorado or maybe again louisiana and here's a close-up of that gun very close up I think the abstracts going on inside of the belly of the gun like shoot or not shoot to be very important here and they are kind of beautiful but they are I think they are nightmarish this is a gun that shot a lawyer in argentina a versa 22 and he was he was put away by the government because he was trying to do good which can always get you in trouble if you really put your mouth out there's another close-up of that and a one I don't think a lot of you have seen actually it's called we are beached people I was getting really dark into these and you know a lot of my looks funny and light and well not all of it but it was all about heaven and hell and what happens in the barrel of this gun and this kind of technology where we're destroying ourselves here's a close-up on I feel like this is my hampton beach you know I live pretty right in the hamptons and anyway that's it I just wanted to dive into that topic and it was one that I didn't think I could relate to you but I sure did and thank you thank you ross thank you so much it's funny that your presentation is on this and one or some of the few nightmares I can actually remember from my childhood were actually about guns it was a weird thing because it was the same kind of dream it wasn't the same dream it was the same kind of dream I always dream in my dreams I saw real dreams I saw stars I saw clouds especially old dreams I saw mini brilliant dreams I saw Educator NASA buy plants I sawISE exists why I wanna stay away from bagels yeah I'd always dream about giant cuttlefish There was a deja vu moment at some point where it was the like the exact same scenario that was in the nightmare car was in the same position allows at the same building like everything looked as exactly as it did in the dream.

Roz Dimon

And I started to freak out and panic like my anxiety levels were high and I was looking around because in the dream there was a person that came up from like behind the vehicle so I was like constantly looking around the vehicles like actually actually fearing for my life. And, yeah, that shook me. I didn't have any nightmares like that after that happened but it was, it was crazy that was a crazy weird time I don't know what was going on my subconscious mind during the time period but it was definitely terrifying.

Roz Dimon

I'm sure it was, and you know a still image can be terrifying and I'm always examining the still image and kind of making animation out of it so it's a kind of a different approach but even with the dynascape so I'm sure it was a different approach. But I know we're running out of time so thank you. Yeah, no problem.

Roz Dimon

Oh, Patrick can you can you wait I think Carl one present something really quick. I think she might have to go. Oh no. Everybody else should present first, do we end at 630 because this is my first time here so are we ending sharp at 630. Probably seven, right. Or seven. Oh, it goes to seven and then we stopped the recording at that point, and then people, a lot of times hang out afterwards. Yeah, but, everybody else shares because I literally just was like, Oh, share something so everybody else should share first. Yeah, a lot of times people just jump in so if you want to just do the raise hand thing under reactions, you know, and then, who knows maybe more people will join in afterwards but it's great to see people, you know, just jumping in showing work. That's what this is all about.

Roz Dimon

Awesome. I was gonna try to jump into the tail. And Patrick next so I, yeah. Yeah, so it's gonna be Patrick Cynthia and I guess you Marla only. Okay, that'd be pretty

Good. Okay, thanks. Well, by the way my, my dear wife, the game sends her best everybody and she's in the middle of a real life nightmare so. Yeah. In the middle of Tehran so that's still waiting. So, but, let's see here, that being said, what I've been doing is that I've been going into the, let's see here. Can you see, can you see my screen.

Patrick Lichty

Yeah. Okay, let's see here I'll go up here and go full. I've been going into what I call sort of the. The subconscious of the subconscious of AI engines like mid journey. And. So, what I've been doing is that I've been making kind of oblique prompts that attempt to attempt to try to do a surrealist sort of way of jamming the engine and sending it sideways. Okay.

Patrick Lichty

So, what, what happens here is that. These are some things that I was doing for one thing that was supposed to be the arrival of the unicorn apocalypse, and this is the background of it I'm just saying you know I took two or three of these and later them. And. One said, this is, you know, one part because you know this really resonated with me because of the fact that I'm 60. And I grew up in the, you know, in the duck and cover days and I was. I said, holy crap, this reminds, you know, this brings back fond childhood memories.

Patrick Lichty

And the next one, this was another one I just said, the world's most dangerous animal. And I did not expect this to show, the world's most dangerous animal in downtown Chicago. And so this shows up. And I said, well, I'm not sure whether that's it or not. But I said, it's kind of a Lovecraftian sort of thing. And that's kind of a, you know, and I didn't really question it after that. But I thought, you know, for the, you know, for the legs and the color of like the papillae and all that sort of thing. I thought on one hand, it had a certain charm to it, but also on the other hand, really horrific. And then the other thing that I've been working on is something that I call artifacts from a parallel universe.

Patrick Lichty

Parallel universe that have been things that grew out of my original work. That led to called the dirigibles of Denali and the shared universe, which led to Nathan Schaefer's creative capital series called Winter Moot and his creating Fish Head Soup. And so it kind of has to do with this Northwestern, you know, set of stories about Anglo-Indigenous parallel universes. And so this is one that's kind of a sort of steampunk Lovecraftian sort of thing. And so on one hand, steampunk cyberpunk Lovecraftian thing where I just started typing in things like jet engines and T-34 tank and looks like a cat and all these things. And just decided that in the back of my head, I'm calling this the real Skynet. In other words, you know, this is sort of like when the Terminator isn't what we think it looks like.

Patrick Lichty

And then it's just, you know, it's... It's big, lumbering, dangerous and fuzzy and cute at the same time. And I think those sorts of discontinuities are the things of which nightmares are made of. But the thing is, is that maybe there's a thin boundary between fantasy and nightmare. So anyways, that's all I got. So thank you. Thank you. Now I can't help but imagining cats with opposable thumbs getting their hands on guns. Exactly.

Patrick Lichty

All right. Well, thank you so much for that. And I guess we'll move right on because we only have 30-ish minutes left. So try to get through everybody. Cynthia, you're up. Okay. Okay. Let's get back to the show. Oh, I know what's wrong. Here we go. Just having trouble on my iPad getting... Ah, finally.

Patrick Lichty

Okay. Finally. It says screen mirroring and it won't bring anything else up. Technical difficulties. What did you say? Technical difficulties. Yeah, I guess. Looks like your on my screen, you're frozen. Oh yeah, your webcam stopped too. Really? Yeah. Let's try again. Wouldn't be one of her salons, I guess. If there wasn't at least one technical issue.

Patrick Lichty

Yeah. That's unfortunate. Yeah. You want me to come back to you or? Yes, why don't you do that? I don't want to hold everyone up. All right, we can do that. Yes, next up then would be Carla. OK. Hi.

Hi. OK. And let me just scrub on the timeline and start this at the beginning. And for some of you, because I know some of you here. So for some of you, you're already familiar with this piece. But because we're talking about nightmares, it just seemed apropos of that, a lot of my work deals with the absurd, and I have a very rich dream life and sometimes sometimes numeric, but I always try to filter it through kind of absurd depictions of the human condition.

Carla Gannis

Often incorporate remix into my work quite a bit. And so I'm going to share a piece that's about eight years old right now. It's called the Garden of Emojigalites. But I just feel like I was going to just pick out pieces from the Hell panel. But like what I start to do with the moving image work, Paradise is, you know, flying planes and boats, you know, crash upon Paradise and it becomes this arid, you know, kind of spot and all sorts of stuff happens.

Carla Gannis

Earth as we know it is depopulated of humans and animals as a nod to the Anthropocene. And so there's all sorts of nightmarish. Nightmarish, nightmarish, nightmarish elements to it. So okay, without further ado, I'll just share this. And there, I'm sharing the version that has audio, which is very kind of upbeat and Baroque, some kind of, again, remix, but so take this in the kind of absurdist sense of nightmares.

Carla Gannis

All right. So let's see, let me make sure I have the right screen and I'll share sound. And here we go. Am I sharing this screen? Yes. Okay. Here we go. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay, so I think that's a good stopping point. Let me stop playing it to make sure you're not still hearing. But anyway, I've done quite a few different explorations of this remix from 3D printing to really focusing on the hell panel, because I have to say there's a lot more fun in working on that because it is so absurd and a space that we often don't want to kind of be too conscious of. So just thought I'd share that.

Carla Gannis

It's like a nightmarish Mario Bros and Farmville kind of. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. Because I first started making this in 2013. So emoji were still kind of new. But like we were using that. And we still are as this shorthand expression for emotion with each other online, right? And via all of our devices. And I was like, what happens if you kind of remix that with this piece that continues to resonate 500 years into the future now? And what happens if emoji when overlaying a Bosch no longer just cute, happy symbols, they have other resonances and things. So yeah, it works. It definitely works. The use of emoji is a great way to kind of get into the real world. And I think that's what I'm trying to do. The use of the emoji is something that I find really, really incredible for art. It's a shorthand for feelings, but we all ascribe different meanings to them.

Carla Gannis

You know, I send you a rose, what does it mean to you? A rose is a rose is a rose. That's just it. Yeah. And the thing I also noticed was how much the video game art had an influence there. Yeah, yeah. A lot of different things. Yeah. A lot of different influences flowing into that. And the thing that's funny is when you first look at it, it just seems like the happiest thing you've ever seen because it's really highly saturated. But if you actually watch it, yeah, there are darker, you know, kind of connotations.

Carla Gannis

It's sort of amazing the way happy things become terrifying and how you can use those things. It's sort of, there's a feeling of the Teletubbies just gone absolutely wild and scared. Yeah. Like, Clowns, all the different things from my childhood, a lot of them, you know, are kind of dark too. Lee, it's good to see you, by the way. It's so good to see a couple of you. I'm really happy to be here tonight. Thank you.

Carla Gannis

Hey, Nina. Hi. Patrick, everybody. Well, thank you so much for your presentation, Carla. I think Marlo wanted to present next after you, I think. Yeah, I decided against it. It was very last minute and there are basically three rough pieces of an animation I'm putting together and I brought them up and I don't feel comfortable playing them. I have a lot to say about dreams and nightmares and how nightmares can actually change and turn into insightful things and that's insightful messages, so to speak. I come from the same place that Michael comes from in looking at Dreams.

Carla Gannis

It's very spiritual as well as analytical, as in Jungian psychology and the connection between the body and the mind and the psyche. So anyway, to make a long story short, I think I'm going to not tonight, but I was anxious to, and that's why my hand went up. I've been really enjoying this whole evening. Thanks, everybody. Well, thank you. And maybe some other time then. Absolutely. Absolutely. All right. Well, thank you so much. All right. I guess that just leaves Cynthia.

Carla Gannis

Are you ready to try again? Yes, I have switched to another iPad. So let's see what happens. All right. All right. Can you hear me? Yep. Yes. I'm going to try one more time and it doesn't happen. Must have a bad connection tonight, I guess. Yes. It just wasn't meant to be. Thank you for letting me try again. All right. All right. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes.

Carla Gannis

Yes. And I guess I'll go after

Lee. So this was for me also a bit last minute. I was realizing that not all the nightmares are ones that happen at night. And sometimes it's experiences that happen in your life. I did a piece about 15 years after 9-11. So I was in the neighborhood when the buildings came down. And I never really touch, never really reconciled with that. And this was like the first time that I actually went down and looked at the place afterwards. I live about 10 blocks away.

Lee Day

And it's sort of, it came out of looking at some both, some Japanese photographers and maybe Robert Frank where the ideas aren't linear but just sort of bounce around. So I will. I will play that. Let's see if that works. Is that, can you see that there, the screen? Yeah. There's no sound to this. Holy cow.

Lee Day

Carbohyd. Thank you. Thank you. So that was sort of my way of maybe coming to terms with 15 years and looking back on it. Final thoughts? False you could definitely feel how somber it was well for the for the next two months I was on yahoo messenger up all night with friends who were living down past 14th 14th and that sort of thing who were just so freaked out but they were staying there and the other thing that was really crazy is that wolfgang stelo was doing a webcam installation at postmasters and I was streaming that day and that was really crazy and then also was it michael richards who was in the residency he didn't get out he just done a piece with planes flying through his body yeah I had nightmares as a child.

And one of the major nightmares that I had, recurrent nightmare, started when I was about three years old. And it would be where I'd see these billows of clouds and smoke and ashes and people running running and screaming and hollering and knowing that death and destruction were obvious. And I remember my mom, because I grew up in a military family, my father, this is a portrait there was a Marine. And my mom would say that the Americans were so blessed because we had never had modern warfare on American soil. Soil.

Verneda Lights

But I knew from the nightmares that I had, even as a toddler and on throughout grade school, etc., that this was a war on American soil. And I knew inside me that was going to happen in my lifetime. And I gave it a name, I called it the World Chaos And it continued throughout undergraduate school, medical school, medical practice. Every couple of weeks I would have the world chaos dream. And then when I closed my practice in 1999, you know, I was at a crossroads and I didn't really know what direction I was going to take after walking away from a medical practice.

Verneda Lights

And I took that opportunity to spend some time with family and whatnot. And I visited my parents and who were greatly, greatly, greatly upset that I determined I was going to do something else. And I didn't know what that something else was. And so I went to spend some time with my brother in Philadelphia.

Verneda Lights

And I got on a plane on the last flight out of Savannah on September 10th, 2001. So I was in the air, you know, as midnight crossed over to September 11th. And when we flew over part of Pennsylvania, we lost altitude very quickly and people started screaming and whatnot. But then the plane leveled off and everything was fine. But that gave me a fear that I was not familiar with when that happened. And then when I got to my brother's place, you know, slept well that night and I woke up the next morning, I said, let her know that I'm all right. And I called my mother. My mother said, did you hear about the terrible thing that happened in New York? And I said, no, what happened? And she said, well, why don't you just, you know, turn on the TV and watch the news and then call me back.

Verneda Lights

And I did as she instructed and I turned on the news and there was the world chaos dream dream looking right at me, you know, as people terrified, we covered with dust, you know, they look like they belong more in Pompeii than in New York City. And when I saw that, I said, Okay, you know, there's a reason why I've been having this dream.

Verneda Lights

This is, I took it as a sign and my sign was that no more medicine you know no more going back to that well ball and chain sort of existence anymore but I had to forge a new path and I was so agitated by what I saw that I didn't really know what to do and I tried to write about it And because that's what I knew, I knew about poetry. I could write a poem, but the poetry wasn't happening to express what I felt. And then I stumbled upon paint, a little rinky dink program in Microsoft, you know, puts into the PCs, I ran into paint, and felt how soothing the colors were. And I would just play with the colors and calm myself. And then that moved into using forms and shapes and whatnot. And from that experience, I created my first series of digital artworks and I called it Beauty for Ashes, a 9-11 art memorial.

Verneda Lights

And four of the pieces out of the 12 in the 2003 Boston Cyber Arts Festival. And that was when I knew that I had found my path. But 9-11 was my signal to pivot from medical arts into visual arts. And I didn't want to discuss it tonight. That's why I chose to be quiet. It but lo and behold it found me anyway you know so thank you thank you for sharing that and remembrances to george feifelt who passed on a couple weeks ago who ran boston cyber that was such a premonition. Obviously, the story is very compelling. Sometimes we know we have a premonition. Sometimes we just know there's this recurring thing going on. So the thread was really quite a journey. Thank you for sharing that. And I just had to comment, Lee. My heart was breaking through that whole series of photographs. And I thank you for sharing.

Verneda Lights

There were a few connections to that disaster. And a lot of universal ones like we all do. But I hope that your sharing helped a little bit with your own experience. I don't know how you do that. I don't know how you find closure with this kind of thing. You know? But helps in your own healing process. Because it was very potent. And thank you. Yeah. Thank you. Thank you.

Verneda Lights

Yeah. I think I wrote this in the chat. But I find it incredible things happen in these meetings. With the text question. But you know, the last presentation was about 9-11. And I wrote in the chat that it's our shared nightmare. I mean, something very poignant about that. Thank you for those images.

Verneda Lights

That's a good way to put it. It is sort of everyone's shared nightmare. Yeah. Yeah. You know, I think. I don't meet anyone for long. Even all these years later. After 10 minutes. If they're in New York or somewhere. Or there's a deep connection. It always comes up. Interesting things. I went out there in October. Actually. And.

Verneda Lights

And a friend of mine was working for, I think money matters or something like that. Up in the 42nd. Story. And he gave me a look down into it and I just. I just wept. And I just wept. So. I think every single person just about those. They probably have a 9 11 story. Just about like I was actually in Washington, DC that day. On a random trip with my family. Well, I was supposed to see ghost of the mint. And see the Washington monuments and all sorts of things. So I've never actually got around to doing that by the way, all these years later. But I remember. I remember. We were up there and. Woke up. In the hotel room. News on.

Verneda Lights

I think it was just after the first plane had. Hit the first world trade center. And. Not incredibly long after that. Like, I'm not sure what got into my stepfather. At the time, but he opened up the door. And there was like this huge. Plume of smoke. Off in the distance. And I was like, what in the world was that? So we were like flipping through the channels, trying to figure out what else had gone on. And lo and behold, the Pentagon had also been hit. And we weren't incredibly far from there. It's like.

Verneda Lights

We need to leave. As much as we need to. Wanted to follow what was going on. It's like, we felt that we needed to get out of there, but. It was, it was, it was madness that day. We ended up like camping out in the McDonald's. So try and wait things out. We'll see if things will calm down. But yeah.

Verneda Lights

You know, it's not, it's not the same kind of tragedy, but. There's a time period then that connects what's happening with this group. And with digital with that time in the nineties, that was a, it was a really raging, very. Creative nineties for the.com. And so, you know, the dot, not only that will the towers fell more seriously, but, but the.com had also fallen. And. Downtown New York just completely imploded, you know, and it was a huge.

Verneda Lights

Rising. I know there are other people here who can speak to it. So I'm not playing the violin necessarily, but it is a, it is a movement that if we are going to start a journal or something, I think we have to tie to that, that movement. Cause that was our first surge and it got wiped out. It really got wiped out. Put me in academia. Really? Excuse me. That's what put me into academia. I mean, I, I was running a design firm and all that sort of thing. And. Yeah. Our, our income dropped by about half. You know, when everything got outsourced and everything, you know, and it's just like, I pull, I, I kept, I kept the nose up on the plane for about two or three years. And I just said, this is just, this is too hard. And I think that. You know, I, I think that I've always wanted to be an academic, so let's give it a shot.

Verneda Lights

And then I went off to grad school. So. I think that's how I got into it. So I think that's how I got into it. So anyone remember the term Silicon alley. And multimedia. Silicon alley. Yeah. Right. Cheryl, did you have something to add? I just want to say. Sorry. I just wanted to say that I'm, I'm going to leave a little early because every night I saved myself from my day nightmares. By watching the landscape artists. I don't know if anybody knows about it, but it's. On PBS every night. Every weekday night at 7, 7 PM. Oh, and it's, it's wonderful. They have all, you know, such different, different ways of painting and it's just a fun thing to watch. And it goes for about 45 minutes.

Verneda Lights

So I'm going to, I'm going to sign off. And I had some comments, but I see the time is getting there. So. Love you all. And I'll see you next time. And I love all the work. And I appreciate it. And get, get us out of this nightmare. Yeah. They're multiple. Yeah. Dabo. We started a little bit late. If you have some work, you want to share, you know, I'd like to see it. Yeah. Yeah, me too.

Verneda Lights

Oh, Oh, Oh, Oh, It is connection crashing. Where did he go? Yeah, we lost him. Dang. He might have tried to screen share and then something weird happened. I feel like I'm not alone. Yeah, those images, Lee, were really just no words for it. I mean, I had done some freelance work not too long prior to that for Cantor Fitzgerald, who was like up on the top floor and just shocking the whole situation. I left New York in 2,000 and went back down from Boston on an sl train that like in powers were still smoking. I mean it was just freaking crazy. Yeah, it was.

Verneda Lights

Yeah. Mm. Yeah. We thought you were going to show something that the need blew up. Yeah. So speaking of dot com crashes, my computer just blue screened. Yeah. Good old solid state drive got me back into here quicker. But yeah, no, my computer just crashed all of a sudden. I've been getting some blue screens lately, too, and it's freaking me out. Are you on like a PC on a Microsoft? Yeah, yeah, yeah, me too. And I don't know what's happening. Ah, that's a good question. Okay. Glad you're back. Yeah. Yeah, hopefully, hopefully I can stay, because the last time this happened, it was like a series of blue screens, and like it didn't stop for like nearly 2 weeks, and I'll try to figure out what the heck was going on that was a fun time computer was only like 6 months old at that point, too, and another kind of a nightmare.

Verneda Lights

Yeah. All right. Hold on. I will try to show this real quick. Give me one second.

Mm. Let me screen. All right. So I'm not sure if you guys have too much familiarity with what sleep paralysis is. Or have experienced like paralysis yourselves. But pretty much the whole idea with it is that when you when you're asleep, you sometimes you can wake up and like your brain still more or less be half asleep. But some of your sensory organs are still active like your eyes.

Davonte Bradley

And you can still experience sensations. But your motor skills and everything like that. They're pretty much null and void like you're. It's almost like you're trapped in your own body right? Oh, yeah, yeah. So it's a great time and I've been experiencing sleep paralysis for a good chunk of my life. I never knew it had a name until years later. But I've been experiencing for a long time, and for a lot of years.

Davonte Bradley

The thing that always coupled with it. There was always a sense of foreboding. Always the sense of extreme anxiety always like massive my fear like I feel my heart beating in my chest, and there wasn't anything I could do about it. And my eyes would always be like looking around like my surroundings, and it was always dark room, because you know you sleep at night, and this is what happened. But the shadows would not be still the shadows would be moving, shifting, morphing into all sorts of odd shapes. And sometimes it would manifest themselves into like actual figures like human shaped figures sometimes.

Davonte Bradley

And one of the things I also remember is that there was always eyes like every single time there's always eyes somewhere in those figures. No terrifying to me, and always dreaded, always dreaded experiencing sleep paralysis. I hoped it like I each time it happened. I hope each time would be the last time it would happen. It wasn't the case. It wasn't the case.

Davonte Bradley

And I don't know when or how it happened but there was a point where, like I decided like enough is enough. And I tried something different. So I that night. I still have like some mobility in my neck so I can move my head a little bit. So I close my eyes and like I shifted my face directly into my pillow. So I closed my eyes and like I shifted my face directly into my pillow.

Davonte Bradley

But if it wasn't because of more difficulty or basically being unable to reach right where not doesn't matter not during my hip Yup. Not sure what possessed me to do that maybe I was just trying to avoid the hallucinations and all that. But I was hoping the hallucinations were going to stop. They did not stop in the absence of any kind of visual inputs that my eyes could pick up just the back of my eyelids. It was my brain was still trying to form imagery.

Davonte Bradley

Except it was completely different this time around. It wasn't terrifying, actually. There was, the best way I can describe it, it was like wave upon wave of shifting psychedelic colors with like this weird web of black just all throughout it. And I remember describing it to the first time to, I think I was talking to my mom about it. She was like, are you on drugs?

Davonte Bradley

Because it sounded really odd. And I was like, no, I'm not on drugs. Like this is part of my sleep paralysis. I think it was part of hallucination. But this was at the time, this was in 2004 when I made this image. That was like the closest I could get to it. At my relative level skill. And then I think this is in 2008.

Davonte Bradley

This captured a bit more, you can see kind of like the oscillating black figures all or black lines all throughout, but colors underlying it. And the other part about too is that it wouldn't necessarily just be like black lines, they would sometimes actually form or shape themselves into like actual recognizable figures like it would make skulls, it would make like animal faces and heads and all sorts of things that would be constantly morphing and shaping and couldn't really quite get that. Again, artistic ability was limited to what I could pull off. And then, again, there was always eyes, too.

Davonte Bradley

And then, two years ago I discovered Deep Dream. Oh yeah. And when I saw what the Deep Dream outputs were like, if you look closely enough, like there's eyes that were out like every single image, like that visual static is actually a prominent feature of the sleep paralysis hallucinations I experienced. I was like, that's what that looks like this is finally like this is what I see during these events sometimes. These like four morphing figures that. You can recognize them as something but not quite. And then eyes and colors everywhere.

Davonte Bradley

So I did a little bit of experimentation with that. This one is a bit more subtle but you can still see that there's still like shapes within the colors and. Yeah. But, for me. It was, it was very interesting being able to kind of take control back of. Yeah. My sleep. With taking this terrifying or formally terrifying experience and turning it into something beautiful that I actually kind of look forward to experiencing despite not being able to like move.

Davonte Bradley

The increased heart rate and anxiety all that went away once I learned how to do this, and it doesn't happen so much anymore I'm thinking that a lot of it had was around. Now how much stress was present in my life during that time. Like what had happened so far and how many parts that were terrible for me is actually untouched by time love turmoil of pain a lot of uncertainty.

Davonte Bradley

Very toxic home environment. Pretty sure that had a big part to play with sleep paralysis like popping up. But now that things are kind of even out for me. I've actually the episodes that I have state process they're very few of our between. Like it's very infrequent. I think I can count on maybe one hand how many times this year alone I've had a sleep paralysis experience, whereas before it'd be like multiple times a week.

Davonte Bradley

So, yeah, that's, that's what I've got. Let me try to stop sharing. There. Yeah. It's, it's hard when I guess when nightmares are create such wonderful output. Yeah. Yeah. Because the images are beautiful. Yeah. And it was, it was so strange because I, I was genuinely terrified of what it looked like before, before I got some semblance of control with what was going on. It was dreadful.

Davonte Bradley

Like I have a couple times I actually felt like I was going to die because my heart was beating so fast and so hard. And there wasn't anything I could do about it. And then when I discovered I could do things like. I can actually kind of. Yeah. Yeah. Take some semblance of control with it. All of that went away and then.

Davonte Bradley

It was amazing. Except now I don't experience them anymore. So, so kind of a fleeting thing and I actually the last time I did experience like paralysis, I couldn't trigger that psychedelic experience anymore like I did everything I did before and it. It just wouldn't happen. It was just. Brown. I wonder if making those images like resolved something psychologically, you know, I don't know.

Davonte Bradley

Yeah, that's a quick it sounds like you be friended I mean when you turned your head into the pillow and try to, you're describing early efforts to just sort of change it up. I know the dream that I was going to talk about had to do with that befriending what was nightmare material and when I start. Anyway. That how would be perfect as well it would just change into something completely different like never saw before and then again but also change into something completely different when that changes every year on say let's say five years well then look what might happen then because going through those experiences will change over time and make them normal again so really fast forward thing there was no doubt about it would change again but how could we bring about change did just came back out of nowhere that she doesn't feel quite saferight now going through her suffering right now what kind of advice would she give other kids right now what kind of advice would she give her parents right now from those experiences what kind of advice would she give her parents right now right now when she says yeah get doing something over a bit.

Davonte Bradley

But that's fine. But I appreciate everyone that showed up and participated and shared and all the discussions that happened. It's always a pleasant experience with all of you. So I want to thank you all for that. And yeah. All right, Davo, you want to count us back down and thank you Davo again for your service as always. No problem. So nice to see you. Nice to be here for my first time. Yeah, no problem. Nice to be here for my first time as well. Thank you, Ms. Nita for inviting me. Ms. Vernetta, I think we're actually from the same town.

Davonte Bradley

Where? I'm from Ladies Island. Ladies Island. Okay. I'm in Port Royal. Yeah. My mom knows you, I think. Oh yeah. Who's your mom? Elizabeth Aiken, Santa Gatti. Oh, I know all the Akens. Yeah. So I just want to say thank you again for inviting me. I hope to have something to share next time. Thank you so much again, Ms. Nita.

Davonte Bradley

Thank you for coming. Whoever wants to stick around after the recording stops. Wonderful. We have a little kind of tradition here. In lieu of an advisory board, we have an after party instead. And that's when we get to the end of the program. We talk about new initiatives and just stuff not related to the salon topic. And that's usually where we come up with the next salon topic too. So you're all more than welcome to stick around for as long as you want.

Davonte Bradley

So what do you think, Davo? Should we press pause on this thing? Yeah. I think we can. Oh, Patrick? What? Huh? I said, Kelly. Oh, oh. This is, all right. Sorry. All right. And we are signing off in five, four, three, two, one. And.