Certain parts of this experience might pose a risk to you if you suffer from epilepsy.
Click, drag, release or do nothing at all.
Plug-in your virtual reality headset if you have one.
Dream is an online experience-generating system based on the unique mechanisms of dreams. Dreams seem to draw upon personal, collective and genetic memories. Our experiences, senses, intuitions and emotions are filtered by a neurological system that then presents us with a simulated reality guided by its own rules and internal logic. In a way, Dream is more an alternate reality than a virtual reality; it is a brief immersion in a parallel dimension that asks us to reconsider our relationship to both our dreaming and waking states.
Imagined and composed by experimental musician Philippe Lambert, Dream is built on a custom audio-visual synthesizer coded by Edouard Benoit-Lanctôt. You can navigate the animated dreamscapes created by artists Caroline Robert and Vincent Lambert. You might also stumble across the illustrated dreams of people who participated in our live draw-in events. Each visual memory is there to be morphed and transformed into another memory, creating a unique journey for each dreamer.
To interact with Dream, you can click anywhere, drag, release or even do nothing. As in dreamtime, you cannot “control” the dream but you can influence its content.
“In creating Dream, I wanted to work with visual artists in a similar way to how I collaborate in my musical practice and process. I thought of the artists as different instrumentalists, who could improvise on the theme of dreams and create images to be layered and organized in time, in a live performance conducted by the user. The artists could play with a unique digital toolset, generating memories that could then be endlessly morphed into one another. I approached the collected drawings of audiences as visual field recordings or found sound materials, so that Dream would be less a single vision and more of an ensemble piece, accessing both an individual and a collective memory database.
In dreaming, everything is real; in waking, everything is real. Both states are part of the experience of life. In this hyper materialistic era, we often forget that everything is possible. It is important to remember that our own existence is basically a fragile moment in an endless stream of complex cosmic and local events. Our societies and cultures are just the manifested dreams of our ancestors. As a massive environmental crisis looms ahead, it is imperative for us to look into our dreams collectively and individually, to refuse to accept the status quo, and to realize that we as a species must continuously dream to shape our future. Having a vision is the first step of creation. To create is to be human.”
This dream is over, but you may continue to dream forever.