Blue Delight: Cyanotype Algae as a Dream Glossary
This series of images from the 19th century is so evocative that we could well use it to represent the history of our dreams.
The structure of dreams, if the phrase itself is not contradictory, is in essence dilated and impossible to grasp. At the end of the day that is perhaps the psychobiological function of dreaming: an arena in which we can distend the processing of our individual reality without constraints that detain or rule the flow of our experience.
If we consider the former as a hypothesis worth developing, then we could begin by playing with the idea of establishing a symbolic code to condense, in little icons, the representations of our dreams. And once we enter that imaginative exercise, fate will take us to an encounter with the British cyanotypes of algae of the 19th century. This is a brief glossary of organic forms that, distilled in blue, can serve us perfectly to pictorially translate episodes from the flow of dreams.
Anna Atkins (1799-1871) was an English botanist and photographer who made an inventory of diverse organisms using the cyanotype technique. Her work was immortalized in three books, Cyanotypes of British and Foreign Ferns (1853), Cyanotypes of British and Foreign Flowering Plants and Ferns (1854) y Photographs of British Algae: Cyanotype Impressions (1843). In the latter, of which only three copies are known to exist, including some incomplete ones, we can see images of those marine organisms that stand out both for their elegant simplicity and their notable potential to suggest narrative structures.
Thus, returning to the original exercise and after dedicating a few minutes to observing the algae-like forms that Atkins documented, we can imagine a series of correspondences between these and the narrative structures of our dreams: some of them are extremely simple, almost monolithic, while others reveal themselves in interminable ramifications; there are light, almost weightless ones, as well as intricate and impenetrable ones. We also find rhythmic forms, evanescent designs and figures that barely appear, like a breath of a possibility – those occasions when dreams, or our recollection of them, do not wholly germinate but rather leave us with an indelible trace of a sensation.
Seduced by the beauty of these images, we dare to propose this unusual aesthetic therapy. After all, dedicating some moments to delighting ourselves with the forms that surround us is an essentially healing resource that is always there for us.
Related Articles
When ancient rituals became religion
The emergence of religions irreversibly changed the history of humanity. It’s therefore essential to ask when and how did ancient peoples’ rituals become organized systems of thought, each with their
Seven ancient maps of the Americas
A map is not the territory. —Alfred Korzybski Maps are never merely maps. They’re human projections, metaphors in which we find both the geographical and the imaginary. The cases of ghost islands
An artist crochets a perfect skeleton and internal organs
Shanell Papp is a skilled textile and crochet artist. She spent four long months crocheting a life-size skeleton in wool. She then filled it in with the organs of the human body in an act as patient
A musical tribute to maps
A sequence of sounds, rhythms, melodies and silences: music is a most primitive art, the most essential, and the most powerful of all languages. Its capacity is not limited to the (hardly trivial)
The enchantment of 17th-century optics
The sense of sight is perhaps one the imagination’s most prolific masters. That is why humankind has been fascinated and bewitched by optics and their possibilities for centuries. Like the heart, the
Would you found your own micro-nation? These eccentric examples show how easy it can be
Founding a country is, in some ways, a simple task. It is enough to manifest its existence and the motives for creating a new political entity. At least that is what has been demonstrated by the
Wondrous crossings: the galaxy caves of New Zealand
Often, the most extraordinary phenomena are “jealous of themselves” ––and they happen where the human eye cannot enjoy them. However, they can be discovered, and when we do find them we experience a
Think you have strange reading habits? Wait until you've seen how Mcluhan reads
We often forget or neglect to think about the infinite circumstances that are condensed in the acts that we consider habitual. Using a fork to eat, for example, or walking down the street and being
The sky is calling us, a love letter to the cosmos (video)
We once dreamt of open sails and Open seas We once dreamt of new frontiers and New lands Are we still a brave people? We must not forget that the very stars we see nowadays are the same stars and
The sister you always wanted (but made into a crystal chandelier)
Lucas Maassen always wanted to have a sister. And after 36 years he finally procured one, except, as strange as it may sound, in the shape of a chandelier. Maassen, a Dutch designer, asked the