Public Dreaming: Europe. Almost. A Fantasy.

Public Dreaming: Europe. Almost. A Fantasy. (2017-19) is a live dreamscape that de-and re-constructs and ‘transposes’ elements of the binaural fixed media dreamscapes, designed and composed for the transdisciplinary dream clinics/participatory works Public Dreaming (Newall and Tan 2017), and Public Dreaming: Costumed Social Dreaming (Newall and Manley 2017), into a shared ambient listening as a form of public dreaming. The work extends Saario’s body of nomadic applied fixed media sound praxis, where sound and associated working practices are deployed for intensity, percept and affect production, and as a medium for critical exploration of concepts (i.e. thinking through/with sound). Situated in the matrix of social dreaming, multi-media installation and participatory art, the work asks ‘how to apply post-acousmatic fixed media composition and performance approaches and techniques (Riikonen and Saario 2011a; 2011b), in the production of an effective dreamscape, and as transformative forces in the production of ‘affirmative differences’, and in facilitating ‘qualitative shifts’ in participant perspective (Braidotti 2011), in the given transdisciplinary context’. Nomadic methodology and processes are utilised with a focused application of ‘transposition’ and ‘repetition’ as process-oriented methods (Deleuze and Guattari 1988; Braidotti 2011) in the production of the dreamscapes, together with ‘modulation’ of materials, forms and relations, both in the literal (‘material’) sonic- as well as the Deleuzian-sense (Deleuze 1992). Effectiveness of the dreamscapes were found to be enhanced by the: ‘Transposing’ of brainwave synced binaural beating effects into other musical and sonic elements and ‘modulations’ (e.g. amplitude; spatial; temporal, rhythmic and pitch relationships; rate(s) of change); Transformation of Beethoven’s Op. 27 into a cultural ‘refrain’ (Deleuze and Guattari 1988) by the pianist’s ‘transposing’ of it its performance into a dreamlike tempo(rality); Actual, implied and transposed repetition of sonic elements (e.g. micro- and macro-elements, structural sections, beats, pulses, motion, spectral content, digital and analogue feedback)