Faculty of Arts & Science

Digital Futures

Luke D'Alfonsi

In The Night I Dream

I dream about a world surrounded by fields. Electric Sheep frolic through the grass. The flowers bend under the weight of their code.A synthetic veil laid on top of me.I dream about people.People walking in crowded city streets. Living in tall buildings, shoulder to shoulder, window to window, without view of the flowering fields.I dream about connection.A connection between two worlds.One we took and one we created.A line becoming abstracted by the electric Sheep.In the night, I wonder. I wonder about the sheep.What would the sheep say to me. What would we discuss? Would they guide me through the field? I wonder about the field. Did it come from the world we took? The grass and flowers fill my view like pixels on a screen. Red, green, blue. Why does this place feel so distant from what's true? One by One as i count the sheepOverloaded with information, i cant keep track of themAs They jump from my sheet and they speak:As you lay in bed with all these dreamsYou can't help but yearn for what you feel to beSo that one day maybe you can leaveThis false reality.……Or maybe I’ll stay in the field,in a sea of people stuck similar to me. Where there I can be, an electric sheep.

“The video poem, “In The Night I Dream”, is an exploration of the increasingly blurred boundaries between the natural and digital realities. It employs a collage of related footage, that cycle similar to an antique projector screen. These images are integral to the poem’s narrative as the lines of the poem are adapted visually using Davinci Resolve on a computer. The visuals mirror the poem’s progression from seemingly natural elements to the busy streets of Toronto. The poem draws inspiration from iconic works of early cinema, including “Un Chien Andalou” by Luis Bunuel and Salvador Dali, “Anemic Cinema“ by Marcel Duchamp and Man Ray, and "Meshes of the Afternoon" by Maya Deren. These films, notable for their exploration of dream-logic and non-conventional narratives, have significantly influenced the poem’s structure and themes. The video emulates iconic scenes and imagery from these important Dada/Surrealist films”