dreamMap: a project
http://www.itp.tsoa.nyu.edu/~windeatr/dreamMap.html
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The Talmud says: "A dream which is not interpreted is like a letter
which is not read."
Like a lot of people, I've been interested in dreams my whole life. I
kept a piecemeal dream journal from the ages of 16 to 19. Simple gifts
can crystallize emerging patterns… I remember the day in 1990, when I
bought Strephon Kaplan-Williams book, DREAMWORKING: A Comprehensive
Guide to Working with Dreams (you can find a bookshop selling it on the
web at http://clever.net/coyote/astral/dreams.html). The store was in
Melbourne, Australia. It had the ungainly name "Mythical Reality." To my
impressionable 19 year old mind, this was the gate to heaven itself:
drums, exotic incense, a wide selection of crystals, trippy archetypal
paintings and tarot cards. I read and annotated DREAMWORKING for the
next few weeks. That was the beginning of my dream quest. I spent two
years recording nearly every nap and sleep vision.
In December of 1992, I found the "people's database" FileMaker Pro. My
computer-adept (and now rocket scientist) brother Paul patiently
explained to me "FileMaker is good for helping you organize collections
of things. What do you want to organize?"
"Dreams," I replied, "I have a lot of dreams written down."
My first dream database was born, respectfully dubbed: "DreamTime."
I pored over my dreams and took notes on the kinds of information I
wanted to track and capture from my dreaming life. It was a process of
distillation; trying to find the repeating themes and interesting angles
on the dream content. I fashioned the database entry template into a new
content analysis scheme. […]
In an extension of the DreamTime database, I began to experiment with
dreams, mass media and group dynamics. As an undergrad at Binghamton
University in Binghamton, NY, I had a weekly TV show called Dream Scans
which used TV as a metaphor for group dreaming. Each week a dream would
be sent across closed captioning along with music and video collage
drawn from old movies and footage from the campus. Locations around the
campus were designated dream meeting spots, and people who wished would
try to dream of being there. One spot was under a statue of a wooden
pegasus overlooking the Susquehanna River Valley. Video of the locations
and narratives from the dreams that arose were then re-broadcast over
the local TV channel. Mutual dreaming works and is cool. (Contact
http://members.aol.com/caseyflyer/fbnc/fbnc01.htm for more information
and techniques.)
I brought the dream database to the Web in August of 1994. […] A key
discovery I made in the process of building this site is that the
internet is a better metaphor for group dreaming. By sending fragments
of dream text out into the search engines, you begin to hear the echoes
of meaning resound. The great benefit that the web has is the ability to
link. Though most waking people find order in taxonomic structures, the
hermenuetics of the internet are not dependent on Yahoo or AltaVista but
are illuminated and expanded by following your dream. In other words,
your dream becomes an indexing scheme for the internet. Not only is it
fun, but it is a great way to draw meaning from your dream and forge
creative links through this "physical" manifestation of the collective
unconscious – the Internet.
[…]
The DreamMap as it exists today… here is the blurb from the web page:
The Dream Map is a database to help you record and store your dreams.
Dreams can be typed into the database along with the date and the title
of the dream. However, there is a big difference between the Dream Map
and an ordinary text only database. The Dream Map uses a hybrid text and
graphical data entry method to assist the dreamer in understanding the
dream. The Dream Map consists of five "filters" or "layers" through
which you can categorize, expand and explore the dream content. These
layers put dream content analysis methods into a graphical, interactive
form. The dreamer explores the Spaces in the dream, the Characters in
the dream, the Artifacts in the dream, the Moods in the dream, and the
Insights or messages from the dream. The combination of graphical layers
and icon placements allows you to record and see interesting aspects of
one dream or emerging patterns in many dreams.
I enter my own dreams into the dream map. Right now it is a single-user
model, but I have plans to expand it onto the web again in its new
graphical format. I approached the design as if it were a tarot deck. I
wanted the interface images to resonate and invite exploration. The
sounds were made to give a feeling of ancient time and ritual.
A new version I am working on uses the dreams and the locations on the
maps to create music. Your dreams like the wind, playing a wind chime.
Maybe I'll call it Dream Chime.
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rhizome: how was dreamMap created? what was the Director process?
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I started with a description of what I thought I wanted to make. The
first pass was a storytelling device where the dreamer would be greeted
by a palette of icons and backgrounds that represented archetypal forms.
Then the dreamer would place the icons on the backgrounds to try to
re-create the dream on screen.
This idea then became a paper storyboard. Storyboarding is the only way
I will begin a project now. It is the fastest and cheapest way to work
through a lot of the problems you will encounter in a
programming/multimedia project. I worked on paper for a few weeks
sketching and brainstorming. The weeks turned into months and like all
the dream-related work I have done, the outcome was not exactly as I
planned at first. Maps and data representation began to fascinate me
more than the storytelling, so dreamMap was born.
The image quality was inspired by a set of divination cards I had at the
time called the "Philosopher's stone." They were made by a German
artist. Each card had an image of luminous, floating stones. Some of
them had faces, some were in groups, some cracked and lichen covered,
but all of them had a quality of air about them. The control and
interface images needed to be beautiful, archetypal and informative, so
I tried hard to define as economically as possible the categories I
would use for the dream filters. I used a combination of 3D modelling,
hand-drawing, and scanning/retouching to get the elements together. Once
the elements were in place and in digital form, I began to program some
of the functionality in Director's lingo.
I learned a lot about lingo's ups and downs in doing this large scale
interactive program. It forced me to encapsulate commands that I wanted
to re-use and i discovered the power of Object-oriented programming
(OOP). Lingo has a great set of object oriented commands that worked
wonderfully for the dreamMap. Object-orientation allows you to create
just one template for the properties and behaviors you want from your
objects. Then you feed it different information and address it
individually.
In OOP each dream becomes a set of properties associated with a
particular icon. These properties can then be acted upon by the user or
by the program. For instance, when the dreamer drags the dream icon out
of the dream well each dream is assigned a coordinate in each of the 5
layers. Its default coordinate for all layers is the first place the
icon is dropped, but as the dreamer goes through each layer to explore
the dream, the coordinates for each are stored in the properties. This
allows the dreamMap to know where each icon is for each dream, for each
layer and animate it across the screen when the dreamer switches between
layers.
It might sound abstract, but the use of object-oriented lingo is a great
time-saver. When I want to add some new function to the dreamMap, I am
able to plug it in rather than creep through the whole program. Instead
of a tangle of wires, I created a patchbay.
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rhizome: future plans for dreamMap?
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I would like to get some seed money to update the dreamMap for the web.
I contacted a few web sites about hosting a multi-person shockwave
dreamMap, but everyone is so busy with their advertising revenue… If
you know of a site that might be interested in helping me put some
leverage behind this project that would be great. A dream sharing
"column" using the dreamMap and a famous/funny dream guide might be just
what some adventurous online mag is looking for to drive up
subscribers/visits.
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