For some reason, I was participating in this pseudo art class (the teacher wasn't really qualified) where I happened to run into my old roommate, Steve. In the dream, Steve normally wouldn't be in this kind of class but he just needed one more credit to graduate. As a class we were walking around in a hardware store looking for art materials. Steve and I, excited to see each other again were chatting in the back of the group. The teacher then yelled at us for talking. Annoyed by this, we snuck off into a different aisle where a conversation about art theory began to take shape. He was telling me about this book he was reading, and how chapter 13 talked about simplifying things and that's what he's been trying to do...
Me: That's what I've been doing lately too!
Steve: No you haven't. I've seen your stuff.
Me: Have you seen my latest website. It's as simple as anything I've ever done.
Steve: Yeah I think I've seen you working on it, that whole thing where when you move the mouse the eyes move to follow the cursor...
Me: No no no. That was something I was trying for my old website. What I've done now is narrowed it down to just three slides. Like old map slides that we used to have at the front of the class in elementary school. One slide is for contact information... yadda yadda yadda... and the last slide just goes through my portfolio fairly linearly.
Steve: Yeah that sounds pretty good. But you're not understanding the kind of simple I'm talking about. To me it comes down to science. Art should be simple enough and pure enough to be science. What I'm doing is taking a real scientific or mathematical formula and breaking it down into its simplest structure and components and theory, breaking it down into its essence, and from there turning that into art. Art based on the simplest truths of science, now that is real art.
At this point I woke up. This was probably the most intellectual dream I've ever had. A dream where I question the entire purpose of art? Naturally I'm stuck here wondering if there was any truth in what "Steve" was saying. Who knows. I don't know that art has to be one specific way or another, different art works for different people. But this new art theory has got me thinking at least. And that's a cool dream, when you can think about it afterwards.
2 comments:
That's really strange, and also cool. I never have valuable dreams like that. The only ones that usually stick with me are the naked in public dreams. When I was in Spain after a while I started dreaming Spanish. It was weird. I always wondered how correct everything in the conversation was or if it was just a bunch of gibberish. You should keep a dream blog. That'd be interesting.
I love your mind!
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