Between Dreams depicts a liminal space just beyond waking consciousness where each of us is wrestling with the shift in values, demographic majorities, and the very pressing challenges of present day life in 2021. The series was born from the particular flavor of anxiety in the air as our species transitions from one paradigm to the other. The old ways are decaying, flickering out, but collectively we’re still very uncertain of which new ways to embrace.
Vulnerability is the trait needed to accept reality and grow, but that emotional nakedness is triggering violence in many. The collection shares a theme of transition, each panel illustrates a different stage of growth as convulsions of culture shift the figure’s awareness of themselves and their relationship to the world.
Colors, patterns, and the thin membrane binding the figure were also inspired by the process of fostering Monarch butterflies from egg to first flight. They transform so completely, but through voracious consumption to exhaustion. They spend so much of their existence blind to wider reality until they fully mature, and then they can travel distances that are seemingly unfathomable for their size.
The images were created in open source software Blender because it is one of many real time rendering tools that are so close to replicating how human perception works that they blur our collective sense of reality. After decades of trusting media too much, real time technologies are challenging us to question what we see.
“We are in an active emergency that has already cost lives, destroyed ways of self sufficiency, and threatened the health security of the human species. We need to support the indigenous leaders and others who understand the long term stakes while also evaluating the potential & risks of short term tech responses. We have no choice but to seek solutions. Tension, struggle, and conflict can result in better outcomes for all if respect for one another’s aims.”
Phiam Ash is a native of Nashville and often ate school lunches on the steps of the Parthenon in Centennial Park. He has lived in 7 cities, a few of them twice. A lifelong tinkerer and explorer, he contracts as a writer, animator, & real-time rendering engine producer. He presently lives in Los Angeles but commutes between the past and future.
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