I am pleased to announce my senior show, which, starting December 1st, will be hosted on this webpage! The show will be available for viewing for the full month of December, and potentially beyond. Click the image below to view the virtual gallery.
In Ursula K Le Guin’s 1971 science fiction novel The Lathe of Heaven, the main character is a man whose dreams can change the fabric of reality. His psychiatrist discovers this and realizes that he can direct his client’s subconscious to create a world without hunger or war or any other form of human suffering. The dreaming mind is not so easily guided, though, and the experiment brings incredible wonders and terrors into the world.
Looking at the world today, I can’t help but feel that Le Guin predicted the future. Instead of a single man, dreaming, technology has been our engine of change—and more specifically, the internet. I do believe that early web pioneers intended for their creation to benefit society (and in many ways it has), but over the years it has evolved in odd and sometimes malicious ways as different minds shape it for their own ends. And as technology has found its way into every aspect of our lives it has shaped us as well, changing the way we think and view everything—the world, our fellow people, ourselves. Whatever the intentions of its creators, modern technology has become something wilder and stranger than they could have anticipated.
What Dreams May Come is a digital media exhibition in which I explore the relationship between the conscious and subconscious mind, the impact of technology on both, and what the future may hold for us. This series of illustrations showcase the human condition in the age of the internet, using surreal imagery and drawing from a century’s worth of pop culture. Together they form a narrative that invites the viewer to ponder Hamlet’s famous, unanswered question.