Falling asleep - sand sculpture

What happens when we fall asleep? Having done it at least 16425 times I am no closer to an understanding. I do know that I lose consciousness, but another kind of consciousness comes into play. A reality where you're in even less control with thoughts and actions like you have taken some illicit drug. No wonder people spend nearly a third of their life there.

Dream States

For our second sand sculpture exhibition in the historic courtyard of Dublin castle we chose this as our theme. We wanted a theme which would allow us to make a bit of a narrative as the viewer wandered around the now bigger sculpture.

At the beginning someone falling asleep, the center the magical place they visit and at the end the moment they return to this reality.

Fallen asleep

I was tasked with creating the Falling Asleep part. Having played around with ideas on how to portray movement in sculpture for many years, from doing dynamic poses to actually making mechanical sculptures I had begun experimenting with a new technique in some ways inspired by The Matrix movie and it's Bullet Time camera work. So I decided that that was the way to go.

I would split the action into different frames, like in a movie and carve them intersecting each other. I really had no clue if it would work but what was the worst that could happen? I'd end up with a pile of dust and just say that 'The Sand Man' had paid a visit.

I don't remember why I chose to make the character the way he was. It was probably a nod to the artist René Magritte and his dream like paintings.

I suppose you can see from the photos I've included how all this played out so I won't go into too much detail about the sculpture itself. I will say however that I tried to morph the character as he fell backwards into a deep sleep with his clothes changing and element he was carrying transforming into objects which are more suited to bed time.

A Dublin Castle sand sculpture exhibition Primer

In this post I was going to show how all the sculpture worked out and give a little bit more detail about how we were able to get the whole project organised and established. I now feel It may not have been what you were looking for in this post and that this sculpture can stand, or lie on it's own. As this new year comes into being I think I will make a more full post on each of the projects I helped organise in the castle and have a full rundown of all the piece created. This will allow for bigger posts and so require a bit more research form me. I feel that each projects deserves it's own post as they were about creating a full viewer experience. It will also be a nice showcase to share outside of Steem.

For now, sweet dreams.

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Ps

Thanks for reading and for all the support I received from this community in 2017. Lets make 2018 the year of Steem. You can check out some of my recent post by clicking below.

El Caganer (The shitter) - sand sculpture

Tools of the trade- Ice/snow sculpture

Biggles - sand sculpture

I hope you'll join me again soon.
@ammonite