Rationale
Dream Odyssey is a project to explore the realms of dreams and their interactive narratives. The beginning of the animation used to build the interface shows the protagonist awake asking if you want her to go to sleep. When you click the sleep button you are then presented with four squares which you can then rotate by clicking their centres to reveal another hidden image. You can also click the orange circle to reveal that particular image in more detail with animation and sound. When viewing the larger image you can progress through the series of larger images by clicking the centre of the image, or you can click the orange circle to return to the four squares.
The four squares inside the interface represent the 4 times we experience the Rapid Eye Movement (REM) stage of sleep per night. REM is the stage of sleep when we experience the most vivid dreams. Dreams can follow through or new ones can be created, so each square is separate, whilst having a main theme or connection.
Freud and Jung, psychologists who both studied dreams, also studied ancient mythology. Jung related the types of characters often seen within myths to the archetypes, which he believed manifested themselves in dreams as dream symbols or figures. The story of Odysseus, according to Jung, followed a heroic pattern. Freud believed dreams were a manifestation of secret wishes and desires and often used the method of free association within his practice to help patients to reveal the hidden meanings within their dreams. The Surrealists also used methods of free associations such as automated writing. They often painted whilst half asleep to tap into their subconscious.
I used methods of free association when creating parts of the images used within this piece, whilst also staying true to the narrative. I incorporated many surrealist symbols into the drawings such as eyes, eggs, shoes, bread, fish, grasshoppers, keys, clocks, skulls, shells, flies and maggots.
Each of the images is based on a part of the Odyssey, a poem written by Homer near the end of the eighth century BC. I use the section of the story where Odysseus is recounting his journey home from Troy to the Phaeacians. I split this section into 16 parts which I then converted to drawings. These drawings are fitted together in sets of four around a shape. Each of the four shapes can be rotated to reveal the next image. This system was inspired by research into Salvador Dali’s optical illusions and hidden meanings within his paintings and Freud’s ideas about hidden meanings and suppressed wishes within dreams.
By allowing the user to view each drawing in more detail they can drift away from the narrative and then return to it with a greater understanding of that image. This is a “Vector with Side Branches” narrative structure, similar to hypertext used within a web-page.
Dream Odyssey presents the interface to the user as an illusion of control. In this sense it is similar to my “Interact With Me” project. However, this time the control of the user is less obvious and therefore the interface is enjoyable and fun to explore as the user feels as though they are in total control.