Paul Sharits (1943-1993)Dream Displacement (Dan Gustafson)
type on paper with pencil
11 x 8 1/2 inches
Gift of Christopher and Cheri Sharits, 2006
Dan Gustafson CMS 415
10/18/76 Dream Displacement
One of the best critiques of my work 3/17/79
Dream Displacement
As I approached the installation, I was prepared for a strong attack on my sense of hearing, because I would hear the sound of breaking glass from a considerable distance away from the room. When I entered the room, however, I was surprised to discover that the sounds emitting from the four speakers were not as shocking or irritating as I had expected. Instead, my attention was instantly diverted to the moving colors on the wall in front of me. I stood behind the four projectors for a moment before actually entering the space between the wall and the projectors, examining the surface. I resisted the urge to formulate an intellectual conclusion about the patterns of flowing colors and their relationship to the sound, and simple stared at different points on the wall. I sensed rhythm, but not the sort of normally structures, simple rhythm that tends to set the mind into a comfortable, relaxed state of non-thinking. The rhythms seemed too complex, too chaotic to dismiss immediately. The sounds seemed less chaotic that the images because they were spaced apart rather than thrown into perpetual motion as the colors, vertical lines, and sprocket holes were. The image of pieces of sharply broken glass sprang to my mind; I imagined that ii was dropping a glass pitcher onto the floor and watching it shatter into thousands of pieces flying in all directions. I walked back and forth across the wall several times. During each pass, my shadow on that wall moved with me, and fell back suddenly three times; it was as though the border line between each screen pushed me back. As I stepped back from the wall, my shadow appeared in some places and didn’t appear in others. The border lines between the screens seemed to tie me down, allowing
