Tyler Tekatch’s Terrors of the Breakfast Table by Chris Hampton 2

Tyler Tekatch • Terrors of the Breakfast Table by Chris Hampton             From its beginnings, film, as a medium, has been particularly interested in the phenomenon of dreaming. The first dream sequence turned up as early as 1900, the same year as Freud’s The Interpretation of Dreams, in a short by Brit pioneer George Albert Smith. (The same work is also thought by many to contain the first de-focus in film history). Every kind of storytelling over the course of written history has been interested in capturing the adventures we go on when we shut our eyes — it’s an extraordinary quirk of the human experience, after all — but for film, the relationship seems especially kindred. Motion pictures are an exceptionally close analogue of that biological phenomenon. Every night, in our heads, a cinema for one.             Hamilton artist Tyler Tekatch has long been interested in the place of the dream sequence in narrative film. “It’s this weird meeting ground for storytelling and the avant-garde,” he says, “where you can get away with all sorts of technical play because, ‘it’s a dream, anything can happen.’” Commissioned within the Art Gallery of Hamilton’s Interactive Digital Media Art Incubator program, Terrors of the Breakfast Table ventures beyond the territory of typical dream imagery and into an exploration of their peculiar mechanics and architecture. What he’s made doesn’t just look like a dream, it feels like one, too.  Video Still: Terrors of the Breakfast Table • An interactive video installation by Tyler Tekatch, 2014             Like dreaming, Terrors of the Breakfast Table unfolds in vignettes. In the first scene, a boy walks through the woods and comes upon an electronic home organ. He sits down to play.   [  >>>>>  FORWARD  ]   Share [Distillate © HA&L + Chris Hampton  |  {from the Greek bios} -- the course of a life.] [Also see an Excerpt from a Video Installation by Tyler Tekatch] [This article is sponsored by Charles P. Criminisi • Agro Zaffiro LLP, acknowledged with thanks by the Editors & Samizdat Press.]