Cave of Half-Remembered Dreams

Immersive art and sound installation (KiezBurn, Germany. 2023).

When you sleep, do you dream? And do you remember your dreams upon waking? Such strange, wonderful, or unsettling images and sensations can remain in that hazy zone between waking and dreaming, and some even manage to linger beyond, like memories of another self or a cryptic message to be decoded. Dreams often reveal subconscious facets of the dreamer, but they also offer potent archetypes and symbols that persist through time and across cultures.

As an artist and researcher, I often explore themes connected to embodiment, consciousness, and liminal experience, working with sensory engagements and using collaborative and participatory methods. This project was inspired by experiences of sending and receiving voice messages with friends, sharing recollections of our dreams upon waking. I appreciated both the ‘closeness’ of the audio and the intimacy of the content in these half-awake recordings, in creating a sensory and emotional connection. In working more with audio as a primary medium in my practice, I found myself inspired by playing with such simple and readily accessible materials. I began soliciting dream recordings not only from friends but also from strangers, combining them with my own field recordings and open source/found sounds to create the audio dreamscape that underpins this project.

In order to provide a comfortable listening environment for the piece and offer a more immersive experience, I created the Cave space in a small enclosed dome structure, working with a variety of found and salvaged materials to create a soft yet strange interior where visitors are invited to tune in to their own unconscious mind or be transported to other (un)realities. The Cave became a playful exploration of emergent dream symbolism using a multitude of forms, textures, light, and colours to engage the senses, inspire the imagination, and invoke the surreal and nonsensical experience of the dreamer's journey.