Digital Humanities and the Unconscious: A Study of Neo-Surrealist Expression in the Digital Age

Abstract

This paper investigates how contemporary Digital Humanities (DH) practices are evolving beyond analytical and archival paradigms to serve as expressive platforms for neo-surrealist thought. By integrating artificial intelligence, generative art, virtual reality, and digital interactivity, DH becomes a locus where unconscious drives, dream imagery, and irrational juxtapositions are coded into digital environments. Drawing from both the historical legacy of Surrealism and the affordances of computational creativity, this research traces the emergence of what is termed "neo-surrealist expression” an aesthetic and theoretical revival of the surreal, mediated through algorithmic systems. Through detailed case studies of generative AI texts, immersive VR installations, and digital art projects, the paper explores how the unconscious is no longer solely a psychoanalytic interiority, but a computational terrain coded by data, logic, and machine hallucination. Ultimately, this study proposes a critical framework for understanding Digital Humanities not just as a methodological toolkit, but as a creative force capable of mediating and manifesting the unconscious.