The dream scaffold

Abstract

This article explores the concept of dreams as an imaginative scaffold in installation art and sculpture, focusing on my artistic practice. The exploration emphasizes the potential for immersive experiences that engage multiple senses, utilizing dream maps and drawing to organize and comprehend the dream world. Rooted in my current drawing and sculptural methodology, this article delves into potential connections between dreams, real places, architecture and immersive digital technologies, such as virtual reality (VR), acknowledging their remarkable capacity to enrich sculptural expression. This dynamic interplay paves the way for innovative experiences that seamlessly integrate contemporary sculpture with cutting-edge technologies, where dreams act as both raw material and structural metaphors. The resulting typologies and architectural designs, a result of the process of ‘dream hunting’, serve as the cornerstone of a burgeoning sculptural methodology, wherein architecture, landscape and topography assume vital roles, making space for the concept of the total installation to arise. Introducing the ‘dream city’ as a conclusive case study and a meta scaffolding, I propose the physical reconstruction of dreams through VR and photogrammetry, delineating their unique conceptual and ontological attributes. This ongoing project suggests that by bringing together all the aforementioned elements, an embodiment of hidden desires and profound meaning within its intricate structures comes to the surface through the dream’s perseverance in intermediated forms (drawing, sculptural objects), where identity, memory and historicity create connections to real locations and experiences. Lastly, this article serves as a reflection of an ongoing and evolving artistic practice, where I explore and develop the concept of the dream city. It serves as documentation of my progress, capturing the process of filling in the parts and uncovering the missing segments of this artistic realm.