Edgar Allan Poe's "Dream-Land" Inspired These Hybrid Creature Sculptures

Art and design collective The T/Shirt Issue 3D-scanned pieces from the V&A Museum to create these fabric sculptures that nod towards Poe's 1844 poem.

by Zach Sokol

September 18, 2014, 9:45pm

Images courtesy of the artists

During a six-month Digital Design Residency through the Victoria&Albert Museum and Goethe-Institut London, art and design collective The T/Shirt Issue developed "a taste for staying in the building after dark."

"The silence and calmness that suddenly take over the Museum once its doors close fed a solemn interplay between the objects and our curiosity," wrote the collective'sMurat Kocyigit, Hande Akcayli and Rozi Rexhepi in a press release.

Inspired by this sensation, as well as an Edgar Allan Poe's 1844 poem "Dream-Land" about a voyager ship that lands in a place outside of space and time, the artists created an installation that attempts to mix the physical and abstract. Titled Dream-Land after Poe, the art project includes eight pieces from the Victoria&Albert Museum's permanent collection that were 3D scanned and digitally sculpted to create four new hybrid creatures made of fabric.

Writes The T/Shirt Issue:

"With ‘Dream-Land’ we have tried to create our own place beyond time and space; a place that blurs the boundaries between digital and physical reality, in which parallel versions of the Museum’s historic objects are free to exist today. The known is replaced with endless narratives that collectively create an unexpected history and unremembered future."

The artists explain that once digital data is abstracted from an object, its "certainty is removed, leaving it open for alteration and reinterpretation. In a way, it sounds like a digital art interpretation of soul-stealing and perceptions of objecthood that would simultaneously make Poe, Plato, and Plato's chair proud.

"While slowly shaping up to their final form, each of the creatures develops its own personality, and together they form a scene that’s slightly out of the ordinary."

Dream-Land is on view at Victoria & Albert Museum's Norfolk House Music Room through September 21st as part of the London Design Festival. For more information on the project, visit The T/Shirt Issue's website. And below, see some pre-production photos of the work.