Norman’s Dreamcatcher. An Attempt at Visual Dream Recreation from Handmade Notes with the Use of Cutting Edge Synthetic Video Techniques, 2023–2024
full HD video, stereo sound, 5′, loop
Dreamcatcher is the outcome of the following experiment: I take morning notes of my nighttime dreams, and enter them well-nigh verbatim as prompts to the most recent video algorithms (Stable Diffusion, Stable Video, Runway, Luma etc.). I proceed to monitor brief sequences generated by the neural network in search of clips visually closest to the dreams I have recalled. Finally, I use all sequences to edit a brief video, a quasi-recording or possibly accurate interpretation of my dreams – while not exact, certainly the best and most genuine we can afford today.
Dreams shown herein reference intimate situations, poaching, darting around post-Soviet architecture. As the cache of dreams grows, so shall the Dreamcatcher expand.
Multisensory and multichannel dream recording would be my ultimate wish. Yet 2024 does not yet offer technologically viable options to allow it.
Norman Leto – born Łukasz Banach in Poland in 1980. Self-taught artist in the fields of painting, cinematography, and new media. Befriended well-known Polish painter Zdzisław Beksiński at the age of nineteen – chiefly correspondence-based, the connection let him learn the basics of painting. His debut solo exhibition (as Norman Leto) was held at the Ujazdowski Castle Centre for Contemporary Art in Warsaw in 2007. That was also the year of collaborating with theatrical director Krystian Lupa on video footage for the play Factory Two, a story of Andy Warhol’s famous factory. Left for New York in 2009 to complete Sailor, a partly autobiographical novel, and work on a script for a full-length film, which shares the title with the book. The film premiered at the 10th Era New Horizons Film Festival in Wrocław, Poland (2010), and was favourably received at art-house film festivals, such as Biennale of Sydney, and Bradford International Film Festival. Leto moved to Warsaw in 2010. Over successive years, a series of paintings – including autobiographical works – apart, he shot Photon (2017), a full-length film telling the story of life from early days of history as we know it, Andrzej Chyra cast as narrator. Photon was screened in 2017 at the following international documentary festivals: CPH:DOX, Copenhagen, Denmark; HotDocs, Toronto, Canada; 17th T-Mobile New Horizons IFF, Wrocław, Poland; Open City IFF, London, UK; Gdynia IFF, Poland; Sydney Antenna IFF, Australia. Leto has been working on his next film since 2017; Pilot is an account of 9/11 events from the unique perspective of US interceptor fighter pilots. It is scheduled for release in 2026.
photo: Adam Gut
