6/4/14

As my previous research I focussed on body image, leading me to distort the body I wanted to look into distorting the mind as this related to my earlier dreams research. I found inspiration for this idea when I was listening to the XXYYXX album and one of my favourite tracks on the album is called DMT. From my own knowledge I knew that DMT is a chemical that is released in our brain at birth and death and also when we are lucid dreaming.

I made this mini clip as an introduction to this element of my work. It features the song DMT as well as has trippy and hallucinogenic imagery that relate to the DMT experience. I chose to have this playing whilst placing tracing paper over it as this would distort the images and colours. This adds my own element of distortion and also links back to the haziness of dreams and brightness as it has the light shining through it. 

I began researching into DMT and found out how it is also an illegal substance because of the severe hallucinations it causes. This lead me onto YouTube where I knew if I searched for it I could fine some videos of people telling me their stories. I found this really interesting as it enabled me to understand what its like to experience DMT. The following is video I found the most helpful in how he described his experience with the drug.

I was able to pick up some key words that I felt would enable me to develop off of them. He mentions how the room had a strong energy in it and how objects would begin to disassemble. As well as how it is a spiritual experience. For this research I focussed on the words Spiritual, Disassembling, Euphoric and Energised. With these being the main focus I started portraying the words through my own photography and drawings that used fabric as well. I really like the idea that DMT is like an explosion of euphoria in the mind so I used bright fabrics with a shiny surface to represent this mainly focussing on what I imagine it to be like in the brain. Also because DMT causes powerful hallucinations I portrayed this by using a translucent and shiny fabric to cover and act as the eyes. 

So after developing ideas from how DMT is spiritual, energised and euphoric I began to represent the disassembling of it. For this I used the images from the body distortion work, first i cut out segments of the body leaving gaps in-between parts of the body such as there is a gap in-between the head and the neck. With there being gaps I used fabric to connect the gaps together in order to emphasise how the body had been taken apart, or disassembled. I then thought another way I could represent this would be by using wool to connect the missing gaps.I bought a purple wool and a silver metallic wool as these wools represent the euphoria and dreams part of my research. 

I believe that today has gone well as my work has taken an interesting turn, I am pleased with this because I have a few ideas and I know that my work is going in a good direction. So I'm happy that I'm not stuck on my research and that I'm able to progress. For tomorrow I am planning on developing the disassembling idea hopeful through knitting as I can carry on using the wools I used today.