Dreams from google 3d warehouse by Guthrie Lonergan is:
1. The artist’s re-contextualization of seventeen “3D” models – each of which are based on an individual dream of the Google 3D Warehouse user who initially created the model.
2. An accompanying commentary on the process of translating the memory of a dream to a 3D model provided by the dreamers/3D model-makers themselves (in conversation with Lonergan).
The work is viewed on two Web pages – each of which are hosted on Caitlin Denny and Parker Ito’s jstchillin.org website.
On the first page, one views three lines of black sans-serif text extending the horizontal-length of the page.
This text reads:
This is a Piano I dreamed that I was playing, but its actually a tattoo that I want to do somewhere on my body… You can’t really comment about it because i dreamed it and you didn’t see it… Oh well…
*****
Positioned below this text is the 2D representation of a 3D model depicting a black piano keyboard which – when clicked – opens a Web browser tab displaying the 3D model’s original Web page on the Google 3D Warehouse Web site.
On the second page of the work, one views a block of sixteen additional dream-text-and-3D-model pairings which are positioned above a block of seventeen lines of text which each (a.) list the 3D models’ file names and creator/user names, as well as (b.) link to the models’ original Web pages on the Google 3D Warehouse Web site.
The first of the dream memories-into-3D models displayed at the top of this page is prefaced by the following text:
i had the wierdest dream last night. i was walking downtown when a space ship landed in the street, naturely i dove for cover behind a bush. thank you to dj orion for the road
*****
Below this text is an initial view of the 3D model described above in which one views a low medium-wide framing on:
1. A grey figure running away from a large white craft emanating blue flames, which is labeled “space ship,” and
2. A second grey figure labeled “me” lying on the ground behind a rectangular box with a green marbleized texture, which one takes to be the bush mentioned in the dream.
Below this view of the model, then, are three lines of grey text in which a question regarding the model-maker’s memory of certain details is posed.
It reads:
i’m curious if the blue flames from the jets on the spaceship were in the dream? also, there seems to be some sort of steering column inside of the spaceship, is this something that you remembered?
*****
And a reply, reading:
to answer your questions, yes there was blue flames from the spaceship, and yes, i do remember the steering column was something i remembered. i remember the aliens coming out and there was that steering column
*****
As one scrolls down the page, one encounters two more views of the 3D model – one into the cockpit of the space ship in which the steering column mentioned above is visible, the other a high wide-angle in which the steering column is – again – made visible.
Below these views are another question-and-response regarding the translation of dream memory into 3D model.
The question reads:
do you remember anything else about the steering column, like how it functioned, or anything else about it?
*****
And the model-maker responds:
i just remember the steering stick was like a big joystick, controlling the ship here and there
*****
One more view of the steering column is, then, displayed and the next dream model and commentary begins.
The remaining fifteen of these dreams involve similar science-fiction scenarios as well as relatively banal scenarios involving the architecture of, for example, factories and shopping malls.
Throughout the project, though, one theme remains constant:
As one begins to picture a dream, one begins to mutate the dream to fit the picture (until one can’t say for sure if they remember the dream at all).