Senior art show a trip in dream land

Greg Scranton's exhibit explores lighting and video effects

About twenty feet from the double-sided video screen in Greg Scranton's senior art exhibition "Two Dimensions of Dreaming," a white chair rests patiently. From the chair one sees the listless freefall of feathers on a wire bed frame, the rush of ominous clouds and the same bed frame abandoned on the beach. Black and white images overtake the viewer. On the opposite side of the screen, color is limited to dark green, blue and tan.

Both the limited palette and the monochrome world of Scranton's "Two Dimensions" convey the surrealism of dreaming. Consciousness gives way to the hidden world of the unconscious. Memories fall from the sky like feathers. As Scranton says, "Two Dimensions of Dreaming" was created for everyone who remembers how it tasted or smelled or felt when they were 8 years old.

The video loop begins with clouds rushing across the screen and black shading the depths of the clouds. The color video presents the same clouds, but with darker shades. No bright colors adorn this dreamscape, offering the viewer little hope of illumination. Staring up at a world unfolding before him in rolling clouds and dark waves, the viewer feels lost in an unconscious world. Adult awareness fades and a childlike trance overwhelms.

The most captivating images were those of the waves. On the monochrome side, the dark black barrel of the wave counters the pure-white of the wave's crest.

Soon the waves were replaced by the bed frame lying in a clearing in the woods. The bed frame reminded the visitors that while dreaming, memories can take the dreamer anywhere. Eerily opaque lighting added to the illusion of memories being reborn, either during sleep or while one thinks consciously.

The dreamlike sequence continued with the image of feathers floating down on top of the bed frame. Most feathers fell through the wires, and those that didn't stuck on top of the wire frame, cushioning the mechanical instrument of sleep with the soft imaginative unconscious. Throughout the entire video loop, a clicking reminiscent of two pencils tapping played in the background. The tapping was occasionally supplemented by a garbled grumbling sound.

Aside from the mammoth video screen, Scranton created another part of the installation. Possibly the culmination of the entire installation, this was the part where disbelief was most needed to be suspended. This section was composed of streaming clouds projected on the sides and ceiling of a square tunnel. The clouds then changed directions without warning. At the far end of the tunnel, simulating the inner depths of either a dream or one's unconscious, stood the wire bed frame covered in feathers.

To reach this inner sanctum entailed stepping across circular mirrors. The experience was like stepping into your own dream and watching it play out on white walls.

The finished result of the installation seems not to be the five minute-long video loops or the cloud chamber. Greg Scranton's "Two Dimensions of Dreaming" invites the visitor to bring one's own human experiences into the exhibition. Surrounded by surreal images of racing clouds and waves the color of oil, the imagination cannot be penned in. Images on the screen set off memories of your own and soon the visitor is zooming through one's own unconscious. From clouds, then, comes awareness.