#for red it's mostly based on his trauma & his psychological state during the time of his mutation | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

dianabercea · 5 years

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Digging deeper: Dreams

Dreams are defined by vivid or memorable images, emotions and sensations that occur during different stages of sleep. Although the content and purpose of dreams are not fully understood, they have been a huge topic in terms of science, psychology and religion interest throughout history. Many approve the Freudian theories about dreams - that they give insight into hidden desires and emotion, whereas others believe that dreams assist in memory formation, problem solving or simply are a product of random brain activation. Dreams play a substantial role in helping us cope with grief, stress and traumas. Most of our dreams are actually unpleasant; the most common emotions in dreams include fear, guilt, anxiety and helplessness. Moreover, anxiety dreams can be helpful – one theory is that we are working through our anxieties and more able to see what stresses us during the day. Dreams are an opportunity to work through things that frighten us in real life, to play out worst-case scenarios in an environment where they have no consequences. In order to get through the day, we have to edit out so much of what is going on around us, and if we pay attention to our subconscious and our dreams we get a different angle on our lives and issues. When we’re dreaming, we’re thinking in a state we never have access to by day. Dreams offer the opportunity to think in a different way and show new answers to problems, they often contain the seeds of something important. The key themes that I thought of are: sleep, fiction, emotion, imagination. For further expansion I did word association: Sleep: calmness, rest(less), mattress, insomnia, REM, fatigue, eternal, disturbed Fiction: fake, utopian/dystopian, surrealism, supernatural, storytelling, speculative, mythic Emotion: anxiety, sadness, empathy, jealousy, hatred, overwhelming, passionate Imagination: originality, sensibility, idealism, contemplation, picturesque, stimulation.

Using the keywords above I have found some interesting articles: “Les yeux de W” at Centre Régional d’Art Contemporain Occitanie” is an exhibition containing the work of the French artist Laura Lamiel, which takes the viewer’s body and mind on an inner journey through a succession of rooms through which one roams and crosses like the recesses of a memory that is sometimes vivid, sometimes buried, at times radiant, now gloomy. In this exhibition, the details act like the synapses of an infinite brain in which spaces fit squarely inside one another, getting divided, reflected and wrapped. The letter W’s dual and symmetrical structure indicates one way of approaching the journey. Laura Lamiel has been creating minimalist abstract landscapes that defeats our perception of reality in every possible way. By combining quirky deceptions, symmetries and plays of mirrors, Laura Lamiel’s sculptures, installations, photographs and drawings disrupt our perspective while causing new images to emerge. In a reality that seems to be constantly slipping away, Laura Lamiel’s work keeps the perspective tense and radiates perception into the depths of an inner experience. The artist constructs each of her works with an unparalleled meticulousness, combining smooth and gritty, hot and cold materials. White enameled steel, plexi-glass and neon are combined with varnished wood, copper, incense granules, but also with fabric, paper and cotton. The exhibition presents cell structures at the scale of human body. These are work and thought spaces in which the artist has placed stripped-down forms, but also archives, gloves and tissues that seem to have traveled through time, their worn-out appearance obstructing the calm, silent organization of the works. Laura Lamiel gives a significant level of attention to these tiny objects and fragments of life, bringing every focal distance of the eyes into play. From the finest detail to the overall space, the artist invites us to look in every way possible, under, through or from behind, while bringing to the surface what we tend to neglect, treating blind spots as quintessential looking-spaces.

The anxious art of Liana Finck: the New York cartoonist posts on Instagram her observations of urban life and how its etiquette is breached. “I think it inspires my Instagram drawings because I use those mostly to figure out things that are bothering me and make sense of them.” Somewhat ironically, it’s those drawings that draw the most negative response on Instagram. Finck’s keen observation of human behavior reflects intense awareness – to the point of self-consciousness – of her own. She frames her work as “noticing how civilization works” – moments when the urban fabric is momentarily pulled tight. If you do not pay these trivial violations any mind, it may be because city living fosters a certain obliviousness, a thicker skin. But not everyone develops it. “Sometimes I feel like a person who notices these things in a world of blind people who don’t”.

Next, we have Tracey Emin with her own reassembled bed, from when she used to live in a council flat in Waterloo, exhibited in Tate Britain for the first time in 15 years. She describes her work, “My Bed”, as a portrait of a young woman. It shows her real bed at the time in all its embarrassing glory, with used condoms, dirty underwear and empty bottles of alcohol strewn across the crumpled stained sheets. Emin had expressed her wish for the piece to go to a museum and described the Tate as “the natural home” for the work. Emin herself was very involved in how the work was to be presented, and it sits in a gallery alongside two Francis Bacon’s paintings, his 1951 Study of a Dog and his 1961 Reclining Woman, as well as six of her drawings that Emin gifted to the Tate to mark the occasion. Emin said part of the reason she had been so keen to have the work back at Tate Britain was to have a chance to change people’s original perceptions of the piece.“It’s really important to me to show it in context,” she said. “When I showed it originally at the Tate Britain as part of the Turner prize, nobody even bothered looking at the work that surrounded it, even though there were my watercolours, my drawings. So, what’s really great by having the Bacons around it, people will look at the Bacons and they will understand the connection with the bed and my other drawings. They will see the bed is art and that, with these incredible artworks around it, it is in good company.” what would be the most suitable companions, and she was involved in selecting the paintings that would be shown alongside her work. Emin considered that Francis Bacon was a very immediate answer to the question of who would be the most suitable companion to have his/her art shown alongside Emin’s, because there are wonderful reference’s between their work. There is this sheer vitality of the body that moves in spaces combined with a sense of internal turmoil.

Valerio Nicolai, an Italian artist, has a series of works entitled “Amarena”, exhibited in Milan, which is dedicated to that particular moments when everything we thought we knew falls and certainties fall down, personal apocalypses perceived as absolute, moments in which our vision of the world alters and turns to red. The material he uses already contain its own story and his artworks emerge as the result of an exchange of questions and answers between the artist and his creation. The name “Amarena” might recall an idealized childhood, an eternal start of summer spent climbing trees to eat fruits, ice cream cones bought by grandparents, but it could easily be the name of a devastating climatic event, a typical storm originated off the Brazilian coasts. The red dominant of the works is the color of the stage Nicolai interposes between subjective and objective realities in contrast. The images above represent 2 of his works, “Toilette”(the red painting) and “II festeggiato” (the red sculpture).

“What does idealism get you today? Abuse, derision, or sometimes prison” The world is holding its breath and it's stifling. Ever since the financial crash, there's been a sense of stasis, of waiting to see what emerges. As the wait goes on, the feeling of possibility becomes more overwhelming. The comical slogan that appeared in the immediate wake of the crisis, "Keep calm and carry on", makes all right-thinking people want to go mad. But that's largely because people aren't just keeping calm. A common air of resignation has taken over. There's lots of protest on social networking sites, lots of declarations, petitions, information. Yet, this feels like converted people are preaching to each other, their ideas and beliefs only gaining traction when opponents resort to anonymous abuse and threats. Far from bringing people together, social networking sometimes seems only to reveal the depths of our division.

With “From Anxiety to Volition”, the Kunstmuseen Krefeld is showing the first retrospective exhibition dedicated to Ludger Gerdes. With the beginnings of postmodernism in the late 1970s, Ludger Gerdes introduced a new communicativeness to sculpture and installation art—after Minimal and Concept Art. He dealt with architecture, nature and historical aesthetic concepts, as well as modernism, the public space and art’s relevance for society. His art is based on architectonic quotations, metaphors, abstractions and figurations, stagings, the pictorial quality of sculpture and word acrobatics. He assembled these recurring modules into models of thought and narratives whose structures or conclusions deliberately remain open. Models that show the world on a small scale, trees that symbolize the relationship between culture and nature, paintings that are sculptures, words that fall out of everyday speech and a man wearing a top hat who views a painting in one moment and disappears the next.

The relationship between dreams and art is a strong one, having in common the idea that both can be either real or unreal. They complete each other replacing what it is with what might be and they are both exposed at different interpretations. Take, for instance, the extraordinary work of the 15th-century Dutch painter Hieronymus Bosch, who used the fantastical and the grotesque to explore morality and mortality, depicting scenes from his dreams and visions.

#World

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terryblount · 5 years

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Sea of Solitude Review

This may sound like a joke, but I actually studied psychology for an entire year during my student days. I will admit that I came to hate the subject in the end, but the course had a few interesting moments. A particularly fascinating section was on the hidden part of the human mind not accessible to conscious thought, known in psychology as the ‘unconscious’.

The unconscious is the deepest and most primitive level of our psyche where our urges, emotions and instinctive thoughts exist in their most undiluted form. These impulses and feelings lie so deep beyond our awareness that we cannot describe them through rational language sometimes. Still, their effect on our mental reality can be very real, and very palpable.

This is the opening screen. A disclaimer like this, and you know you’re in for something a little more serious.

This is why people are so captivated by monsters and horror. These things represent an outer expression to some of the fears and aggressive instincts we house in the unconscious, particularly as a result of trauma or mental illness. Several games have tried to explore what it would be like to travel into the unconscious, with the Silent Hill and Evil Within series (Hellblade as well) being some notable examples.

Sea of Solitude by Jo-Mei Games, a Berlin-based studio, has tried to capture this experience within an indie game. This represents something like a catharsis for its creative director, Cornelia Geppert, as she takes the player through the darkest and most isolated moments of her life.

Meet Kay

It is tricky to describe the story behind Sea of Solitude since the game plays more like a series of puzzles for the player to solve rather than adhering to a linear plot. Come to think of it, I cannot recall being offered a proper intellectual challenge at any point, so calling them puzzles is perhaps an overstatement. Instead, you could say that Sea of Solitude is focused mostly on the experience and atmosphere it has to offer.

Learning how to let light guide my path

The player takes on the role of a young woman named Kay who wakes up floating on a little motorboat in the middle of a stormy ocean. The scene that greeted me was actually uncanny because Kay herself has sharp, black feathers with gleaming red eyes, and there is also the razor-toothed leviathan creeping just below the surface.

What I liked about the opening (despite the lack of any narrative exposition) is that I somehow understood the underlying message. I have been following the development of Sea of Solitude for some time, but this studio still surprised me with their talent for conveying imagery to the player. I suspect, the stormy waters represent Kay’s troubled mind, and her frightful appearance must represent how this inner state is psychologically turning her into a monster.

Kay then starts up her little dinghy, and a small light blips on in the darkness. On the turbulent waters the light looks like a haven, and I instinctively start to steer the boat towards its glow. It turns out to be a luminous, younger version of Kay floating angelically above the water. She assures me that she will keep me safe, and with a twirl of her hand lowers the water level, and changes the entire atmosphere to a bright sunny day.

Kay the monster

A floating city resembling Berlin appears from beneath the waves. Buildings, streets and cafés are rendered in a soft, pastel-coloured palette. Kay still looks ominously black in her little boat, but everything else appears serene and safe. The younger Kay plays a game with me in which I learn how to summon a little ball of light that will direct me where to go like an in-game compass, and Kay the Monster sounds almost happy for just a moment.

The experience

Suddenly, a bloodcurdling voice emanates from the water, and mini Kay zips off to investigate, leaving the atmosphere black and ominous again. Kay begs the little girl to come back right before a shell-dwelling creature rises out of the water. It utters profanities at Kay and insults her, which immediately led me to deduce that the beast represents Kay’s own self-loathing (because it looks a bit like her).

There is a way to defeat this monster so that I can proceed past the exit behind it. I need to clamber over some of the buildings, and clear away the worm-like strands of corruption slithering around balls of light (or are they energy?) using a trick the little girl taught me.

Clearing the corruption.

Unfortunately, I have to cross open water on a series of floating, garbage dumps, because the leviathan is back and starting to circle like a shark. This was utterly terrifying because the platforms are just out of Kay’s jumping range. Also, the monster can sense when I land in the water, so I have to wait for it to circle far enough, jump, and scuttle frantically on to safety before Kay ends up skewered on its gigantic fangs.

Eventually, the last ball of light is purged from corruption and its beam can be directed onto the creature. Turning the light sounds like utter agony, as Kay screams and moans from the effort. This must be a commentary on how difficult it is to escape the toxic circle of self-hatred and self-deprecation. With the monster defeated for now, I sail back into the sunlight, but it doesn’t last for long…

Techniques in narrative

My apologies if that dragged on quite a bit, but this would be a laughably short review if I only described what the player will actually be doing in Sea of Solitude. As I mentioned, this game’s strength is in the experience, and very little has therefore been invested in gameplay mechanics. The majority of my playthrough in Sea of Solitude was dedicated to helping Kay deal with the rest of the monsters lurking in her unconscious through mostly the same way I just described earlier.

These monsters range from a gigantic, fire-breathing, hairy chameleon representing Kay’s father (enraged by the constant conflict with her mother) to a werewolf-like dog representing Kay’s boyfriend. Get it? Puppy love? The monsters in this game are therefore not inspired by fantasy, but are instead the projections that Kay forms in her unconscious of real people, and the trauma they have enacted upon her.

Don’t let that beautiful exterior fool you. Every time Kay touches him, a monster starts to break through the white fur. It serves as a symbolism for how we sometimes hurt the ones we love.

There is a little bit of light platforming in Sea of Solitude, but what really steals the show is how damn interesting this game makes this minimalistic emphasis on gameplay. Sea of Solitude likes messing with your head and getting under your skin without resorting to outright horror or overly grotesque imagery. What unsettles the player is how they experience Kay’s story with her, and seeing how the drama of her external life has manifested as internal psychological horrors.

I mentioned how Jo-Mei Games constantly uses the power of imagery, which in itself was well done and engaging. I was constantly trying to connect what was happening in Kay’s mind to the snippets of dialogue from her life that plays as she proceeds through certain areas. I am also certain that many players will find the dialogue strangely familiar and relatable to their own lives.

Then there are the visual aesthetics themselves which are constantly supplying the mood for the player in certain scenarios. For example, Kay’s brother experienced horrific bullying and sexual assault at school, causing him to be represented in her mind as a forlorn and sad bird.

The form of Kay’s brother in her mind. I think the developer’s chose a bird to represent him due to its mournful and slumped form.

To save him from this bird-like form, she must share in the suffering he experienced by making her way through a flooded version of his school. This was one of the more creepy scenarios that the game has to offer since the sunken school is infested with red-eyed bullies made from smoky shadows. The dialogue that plays in Kay’s memory is also rather disturbing, as she experiences how bullies told her brother: “We’re going to find you… we’re going to kill you…”

Lastly, Jo-Mei Games have also used colour as artful visual cues to explain Kay’s memories. The blacks in this game have been done particularly well in the Unity Engine as they look dark and bottomless against some of the more colourful and soft backdrops. This instantly alerts the player to when something is sinister or dangerous to Kay.

While Sea of Solitude has been rendered in a relatively simple, cel-shaded style without too much visual sophistication, the particle effects and use of light make the submerged dystopia a splendour to behold. The animation is also pretty good (particularly in how water has been rendered), and wandering around in this surreal world that Kay has shaped within her mind instills that tourist feeling I used to enjoy when I first started playing games.

An ocean of experience

I would be hard pressed to call Sea of Solitude a game about mental illness regardless of how many reviews might say otherwise. I never got the message that this was about a young woman’s struggle with depression or the like. Instead, this is a game about Kay’s journey through an immensely difficult time in her life when her loved ones where just flaking around her.

I actually made this my desktop wallpaper. This game has some serious beauty on display.

Which brings me to the problem. Namely, not everyone would appreciate or even enjoy this game. I loved it because Sea of Solitude was a short but powerful experience that I could link with times in my own life when I experience hardship or troubles. Yet I understand that it therefore makes my outlook biased, and players that are looking for a more gameplay-centred indie title would definitely find more satisfaction elsewhere.

If you are willing to sit back for about 2-3 hours, and you can permit yourself to get utterly absorbed in a game’s story for just a moment, definitely play this. Sea of Solitude is obviously a very personal game to its development studio, and their investment shines through every wave. The EA Originals program is producing some excellent content, and I think we should support games like this one before that awful CEO insists on anti-depressants as a microtransaction within the game.

Appealing visual effects

Thought-provoking content

Short and sweet

Unusual voice acting

Some sterile environments

Gameplay sometimes basic

30 fps cap!?

Playtime: 2 hours total.

Computer Specs: Windows 10, 64-bit PC using Nvidia GTX 1070, i5 4690K CPU, 16GB RAM – Played using an Xbox One Controller

Sea of Solitude Review published first on https://touchgen.tumblr.com/

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