#1815：「Library of Dreams」――権威主義の時代に夢の論理を合成して描く没入型作品

The Voices of VR Podcast. So this was a part of the College Biennale Immersive Cinema, and it's by Jane and Alina, who are the co-directors on this piece. So this is a piece that is very provocative in terms of, like, looking at the dreams and looking at the sort of collective messages that were contained within those dreams that were kind of reflecting the collective zeitgeist of the moment, where the culture was headed. And so what was interesting about this conversation was that I had a little bit of a different concept of the nature of dreams and how I would conceive of a library of dreams. For them, I think they're really taking less of an approach of looking at a single dream and kind of interpreting it on a personal level,

but also trying to look at these global patterns that are happening within the context of these dreams. And they're sort of creating a series of composite dreams. And so rather than the experience of a single dream, they're sort of taking all these symbols and meaning and kind of like mashing it together. So they end up putting you through this kind of symbolic dream logic. But the dream logic is not necessarily meant to be decoded per se. Or maybe it is in terms of like people who were from those cultures of the different references that they're showing may be very familiar with the kind of language of that symbolic dream logic because they're familiar with those signs and signifiers represent. But for me, I had a little bit more difficulty decoding, interpreting this. Dreams within themselves can create a sort of dream logic. And I think they're taking that to an additional layers of abstraction that it was helpful for me to have this conversation to sort of unpack a little bit about how they constructed and what their intention was. I think also part of their intention, I think, in the desired exhibition of this piece would be in a museum context, would there be additional other supplemental information that would be available for providing some of that additional context

that wasn't necessarily provided in the context of Venice Immersive. And so they have a lot of big plans for where this could go here in the future. In terms of the elemental balance, I saw it as Earth-Air, so the centered gravity of being transported into these immersive spaces in the air element, just because there is this kind of experimental but also this compositive dream logic. You have a lot of things that need to be decoded in order to kind of understand the logic of the semiotics and the meaning that are being transmitted within the context of a piece like this. So covering all that and more on today's episode of the Voice of the VR podcast. So this interview with the team behind the Library of Dreams happened on Saturday, September 5th, 2026 at Venice Immersive in Venice, Italy. So with that, let's go ahead and dive right in. So my name is Jane Rejtasinkova and I have theater background. So basically for at least 10 years I worked like stage designer in different theaters. And then I also had my own theater company, but it was all it was before war in Ukraine starts. And then I immigrated and kind of switched, tried to switch to another medium,

starting doing multimedia installations and also VR. So basically that's my first VR project and I'm super happy to be here. And thank you so much for this interview. Hi, my name is Alina Michaleva-Sageliwa and I'm co-author on this project I'm also producer of this project and I've been in VR for quite some time it's been over 10 years since I worked in very different capacities but this is my first fully independent interactive animated project that I'm releasing and I'm also very happy that we made this journey to premiere in Venice Hi, hello, I'm Davide of Hubdak Media, a production company based in Firth, and we are co-producers of Library of Dreams. It is for us as well the first experience that we release as a company, and we're very happy and proud of the result. Great, maybe you could each give a bit more context as to your background and your journey into working with Immersive Stories.

Oh, well, actually it's my first immersive story that I've written. But in general, what was really interesting for me somehow in my head to combine some, let's say, traditions that came from Soviet theater, for example, a Soviet cinema, and bring them back to VR. So I think my, let's say, my strong point is that I have a kind of really academic education in case theater. And what I want to bring to VR may be this knowledge in this part of the art. Yes. So did you study film or maybe just elaborate a little bit around like what you studied in terms of that academic background and what kind of traditions you're bringing into your practice? Oh, okay. Well, I studied in Russian University of Theater Arts. So basically, that's really kind of old systems that we will learn there. So of course, maybe you know there is the Stanislavski system that's quite popular and well-known, but there were also some things that basically came from constructivist theater

and then were kind of a little bit changed during the years. But the general idea of what we learned is, first of all, how to work with the environment, because I'm less about directing and before I was less about directing, more about stage design. So how we can work with environments, how we can change the viewer's perspective, for example, with the spaces. Yes, and on the other hand, it's something that's called like montage of attractions. So you need something... Editing of attention. Montage of attraction. Attraction, I think it's, yeah. So basically that's the system that allows you somehow to be concentrated on your stuff for some time. And for this you need to understand how the contrast between parts work. So basically it's like the thing when you're writing a symphony music or something the same, but with environment and also with actors. Okay, that's it. Thank you. Sorry.

So the journey to VR, right? About your background and your journey into VR, yeah. I think my journey started way back in 2013, actually, with augmented reality and virtual reality. At that time, I was working as a head of marketing for an international news channel. And at first, I saw a 360 video on the phone. It was even before DK1. And when DK1 came out and I saw the first 360 video, that kind of hit me and struck me as something that is going to be the next video. so we're here maybe 13 years later and we're still talking about novelty but over the years I had a 360 production studio based in Los Angeles and I produced a lot of 360 VR projects back then the biggest probably was that we worked as a company called Spirica with HBO on the Westworld VR experience that premiered back in 2017 and after that I shifted to work in social VR and I

spend a lot of time working with Engage, spending time in VR chat, and really diving into absolutely different realm of when VR has a possibility to bring people together. But I think that what's the most important for me in this VR journey is that over this long period of time, I had a privilege to attend a lot of festivals. And I've seen hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of works. And kind of I'm privileged to see how this medium evolved. And now, finally, I am at the point where I feel that I can bring back to this medium and bring some of the experience, ideas, and things that I feel are very important. So, we started with VR. Originally, we come from a computer science background, and we originally started with the idea of creating video games. And by happenstance, we were brought by Max Pirmanteer of the FFF Bayern into this very highland a few years ago,

and we found out this VR experience space. And it was very interesting talking with directors and other creatives, which have a different kind of approach into designing interactive media and finding that this synergy of our knowledge coming from games and their knowledge coming from any other different creative background can create something greater than the sum of its parts. So, yeah, it's a very new thing for us. Our company is two and a half years. Originally, we come from Italy and we came to Germany exactly to pursue this possibility to create something in this medium. Nice. And so we'll be talking today about the Library of Dreams that's showing here at Venice Immersive 2026. And so I've had a chance to see it, but for my listeners who haven't seen it yet, maybe you could describe what is the experience and what is the story that you wanted to tell with the Library of Dreams. So the first thing, the Library of Dreams,

is a project that's based on the documentary research. So we have collected hundreds of dreams from different periods, but in this over 800 dreams over the period of three years that we've been working on this project. And we use this research to develop a narrative story that's based on real dreams. Yes. So basically, we're kind of trying to give Pura the possibility to follow this journey where he can see dreams from different characters. For example, a Siberian peasant from the 30s that lived in the Soviet Union or from a young girl from Berlin in the 30s. But in general, what is important for me, I think, is make, in the end, I hope, It works like a narrative story with a beginning and its kind of culmination, let's say. And the story in general is about kind of losing yourself when you've been kind of oppressed with the state where you live or with the government or whatever. I mean, it's like kind of really sad and a little bit mythic,

like the story of losing yourself under pressure. Yeah. I can maybe add a little bit more specifically because it's important to tag it to the context that we are in because the project originally started in 2022, and that was the year when the war in Ukraine started, when Russia invaded Ukraine. And in a way, it's a very personal project for both me and Jane because both of us, we were living in Moscow at the time before the war started. So we both left and emigrated, And since then, at least I changed the five countries that I've lived in the last five years. And throughout that time, this project kept developing as something that helps us, at least me, to try and understand what is happening in the society that all of a sudden finds itself in a completely different reality. And I think that this project helps me to try to grasp this very vague feeling when you wake up one morning and the reality has changed completely.

However, it's a very, very dreamy state of mind because your reality didn't change. Your house was not directly bombed. It's still here. You still have your daily job. You still go on daily routine. However, you do know that nothing that you knew about this reality yesterday stands true. And then it's also a journey of transformation and how society is changing. But not only society, it's very personal because dreams are very personal to us. So it's trying to understand what is shifting inside the human being when you are constantly exposed to this changing oppressive system that is coming basically after you. But maybe we can start also with the fact that we met with Jane during the educational program that I did together with the French Institute at the end of 2022. And the whole idea of this educational program was that I was working in VR at the time, and I knew how much potential it holds for those artists and those creators who were affected by the war, who had to emigrate.

I wanted to try and bring new voices that can tell the stories. And three years later, that's exactly what is happening, I feel, with Library of Dreams. Because it started with personal dreams that Jane started seeing, and then the research and historic context that we compared the dreams from modern Russia to other dreams from Soviet Union, and to a very important book called The Third Reich of Dreams. I'm just curious to hear some of your thoughts of coming on to the project and what drew you into what the story was being told and why you wanted to be involved yes it's very interesting how this is relatable to people who come from different countries at the moment because there's a rise of authoritarianism throughout the world and so this feeling of waking up into a reality which is slowly morphing into something else and not recognizing it is something which I could personally feel in Italy,

which is the reason why I moved. But even right now, a lot of people are preoccupied about what is going on in Germany, and a lot of people can relate to it. Same dreams we've been getting them from the United States, where, as we know, a lot has been happening. So it was important for us to try to bring this project to completion with our technical skills, yes, but also with the design of understanding how to communicate it better, going from Jane's vision of more traditional media into something which is a bit interactable and can still communicate that subjectivity into VR. Yeah, so the idea of dreams being this kind of like liminal, archetypal, non-bullying space that has lots of potentials that you can explore, but your individual dream is kind of tapping into that. And so when I watched this piece, I had a mental construct of what I was expecting, and then I think what I saw was an amalgamation of all these symbols

or an editing of those symbols rather than a delineation of like I was here this is what happened So you kind of creating a composite So this idea of a library of dreams is also a aggregation or combination or synthesis of the dreams into like an experience where you talk about waking up with an authoritarian state where the reality around you is dissolving and so i really got that sense of a dissolved reality in the sense that i'm seeing a lot of things where i don't know quite how to read it or understand it in a way that there's a lot of symbols in a way that is this kind of dream logic that I'm going through, but it's hard for me to know what the context is or what the orientation is. And so just curious to hear, as you start to create this journey of these dreams, what your strategy was in terms of trying to create a composite or create like an overall journey that's taking people onto this kind of dissolving reality. Yeah, so I think, first of all, we came up with a bunch of locations

where we're similar from this research from the 30s in Germany or in the 30s of the Soviet Union or from our research now. And so we came up that basically there are, let's say, three important things where things are happening. The first is kind of a private space that could be invoked by the evil or by something public or whatever. The other part is kind of a journey part when you have to escape from something. and have this feeling that you have to go, go, go on the way. Also, between these two parts, there is a part on the train station that actually represents this kind of feeling of being initiated to the new life. And I think it's also kind of a big motif. And the last part, and this is kind of a crucial part of the thing, is the mirror part where the person sees itself in the mirror and the personality changes during this part and you kind of flow out from your body. So, in general, we, I think, came up with a scenario that consists of, let's say, these different locations.

And first, what we kind of developed with Alina were specific mechanics that allows us to bring these dreams to VR. So, for example, in the room where everything changed behind your back, that was kind of a thing. And I think it's a kind of dreamy mechanic because you never remember where things appear from when you see the dream. or, for example, this dream with the mirror, because a lot of people have dreams, see themselves somehow in the dreams and also see there in the mirrors, and also this kind of transitioning between you and another character that somehow appears, that's also kind of the thing. So, yeah, so we started with locations, basically, when we figure out what mechanics we can use for the storytelling and when we kind of find out and muster the amount of dreams and what exactly we're going to see. So, for example, I think there are at least 20 dreams in the room that we see, yes, and this mechanics allows us to show a lot of them. Yeah, the thing that, of course, it was not our aim to be kind of super, let's say, we needed to build kind of a narrative journey with this dreamy mood.

And then, later on, you can check all the dreams and we have this library. You can go back to it in our website and just check what exactly you've seen. But in general, what's important for us is this documentary-based project. So basically, practically all the things that you see are kind of documentary-based. But at the same time, yes, we try to put it out somehow in an art way. I think it's important because I've been with the project from almost the very beginning. I remember how Jane was initially pitching the idea at the educational course that we did. And I got just really fascinated with the idea of dreams from different times. and specifically I think the most important part of this project is that we are trying to work with the most typical dreams, with recurring patterns. And probably that's something that still gives me chills every time because it's just imagining how absolutely different people living in different societies in different times somehow have very repetitive patterns

that symbolize something that is helping them as a coping mechanism basically to translate the reality around them. I think it's just a very, very powerful structure that I am fascinated to work with because it tells us even more than we can sometimes translate ourselves. And I feel that the dreams that we are working with are sometimes telling more than people are able to process themselves consciously. And from that perspective, actually the first idea I remember that it was like it would be an open project where you walk and you find some dreams, but then we were really, really lucky, and I'm so grateful to Astrid Hamke, who was running European Creators Lab, because I think that this project would not be here if it wasn't for the lab that we did in Luxembourg in 2023, because basically me and Jane, we finally sat together, and during the five days, we had to come up with a narrative structure,

and we understood that in order to make an impact, it cannot be an open world, because you're not choosing your dreams dreams are happening to you you are not choosing where you are going in your dream and it needs to be a narrative journey it needs to be an emotional arc that kind of opens up and translate the embodied feeling of being in the dream and that's the power of that since then the structure hasn't changed we basically locked this structure where we start with the room which is your private space and then it represents the collection of the dreams that is talking about the invasion into your private space. When your private space is dissolved, you find yourself in this reality and you're forced to go on a journey because your life continues. Maybe the world around you is in ruins, but you have to get up every single day and go on a daily journey. And then there is a culmination because it's a very, very interesting theme for me how people are seeing their roles shifting in the dream.

It means that we encountered dreams from modern Russia, dreams from Germany in the 30s, dreams from Soviet Union, where, for example, a person would see themselves in trying to save people and understanding that something wrong is going on, and then finding out in the dream that they actually wear a military uniform or they are on the other side of this kind of force. So it is the question, who are you in this new reality that you've encountered? And I do believe that those dreams symbolize something also very, very important that our psyche is trying to process, which we wanted to capture as kind of the symbolically something hidden on the bottom of the lake, let's say. If we are having this metaphor, that's something that we decided would be the culmination of our story specifically for this experience. Yes, all I can add is that I think that having these diverse dreams which lead to the same emotional space and the same elements

allows many people to relate to singular pieces. Not everybody relates to the same thing, but they understand what the dream is about and they feel it emotionally and cognitively at the same time. Yeah, it's funny coming to Venice and then seeing like 20 to 30 hours of work and that I find that the dream logic pieces are the hardest to remember because it's like waking up for a dream unless you, like, write everything down. It's sort of, like, very ephemeral. And so there are parts of your piece where I was sort of, like, in a dream but kind of confused. I see symbols. I don't quite know what the symbols mean. So I'm trying to piece it together, but it feels a bit like a puzzle. I'm trying to, like, understand. And I had trouble understanding the through line and then, you know, goes through all the sequences. And then I think it was a part of me that I was expecting when I thought of a library of dreams. Like I've spent a number of times doing work with Michael Mead at his men's retreat where we'll have a dream cabin. People will come in and they'll share a dream and they'll say, here's what happened.

This, this and this. They just share the dream without any interpretation. And then then we start asking questions. What do you make of it? What does that mean? and a lot of times there'll be certain ways that they will understand what it means for themselves but there will often be an unlocking process of other people that are in the room that hear the dream that hear something that was striking to them and they'll ask a question about something and then it'll lock that dream for them and then sometimes those dreams will be archetypal in the sense that they will be representing what's happening in the week-long retreat that we're going through. And so the leadership is looking to the dreams to get information to figure out how to actually run the retreat. And so when I'm going into this experience, I'm expecting to hear what was the dream, but I'm not hearing any of the dreams. I'm seeing like a combination of the dreams. And so then I feel like the dreams are kind of decontextualized in a way that they're in this space that's really abstracted that I kind of lose touch for, like, I want to hear the

repetitions. I want to hear like, here's what happened, you know, from like four people and then be like, oh, here's what I see as the common thread. And oh, this is when fascism was coming in to point. So I guess I was coming in the piece to kind of expecting like, oh, it's a library of dreams. You're going to hear an archive and we're going to hear these individuals and then we're going to see the combination. But there seemed to be a different kind of approach where things were kind of edited together in a way that it was hard for me to find grounding into what the story was for any one of those dreams, if that makes sense. I think that it's very important to understand how we envision this piece actually distributing. Because what you are saying is absolutely right, and it actually represents what we were kind of... We saw this experience as a place where you go into the universe of dreams. Because for us, we felt that in order to deliver an embodied and spatial experience, we are actually building a universe that is based on the multitude of individual dreams

that belong to different people but in order to build this emotional arc it's not necessarily important that we specifically during the experience give you exact information of what is the dream or who is the dreamer we open up a world for you and then after you experience that There is a follow-up, and in the ideal distribution scenario, there is actually a physical exhibition where you open up a space, and now you have an opportunity to dive as deep into the research as you want, to read every single individual dream, to see what the dream world consists of. Just to ask a follow-up question in terms of, do you mean there would be like a book or something with the dreams? It's an exhibition that has an archival context, meaning that you can basically go through endless individual kind of list and titles of the dreams. You can also learn about different people because, for example, the difference in terms of the three timelines that we specifically chose for this experience.

All of the dreams that are coming from Germany, the majority of them are based on the book that is called The Third Reich of Dreams, which is basically the first very important publication in the field of political dreams and i also want to mention because you kind of went into the field where dreams are interpreted what it means deeply for the personality it's a very common question that we get it's like from what perspective from which scientific from which psychological angle are you coming at the dreams But it's almost like, at least for me, I want to keep the political dreams a little bit separate. That's what Charlotte Beran, the author of the book The Third Reich of Dreams, did back in 1966. Because, of course, dreams are super personal. If you follow Freud, if you follow Jung, it is, in many ways, they were trying to decode the dreams, to really understand what is the trauma, where is the person coming from.

But when we are talking about the dreams that are super specific to the political situation, and when you read those dreams, sometimes they do not need a deep personal interpretation. because if there is a dream of a German factory owner who had repetitive dreams of trying to make a Nazi salute and his back was broken or he couldn't raise his hand, it does not require an interpretation of his early childhood or his father-mother relationship. Dreams can tell us a lot, but we chose a very specific type of dream that is happening when a political reality around you changing. And it's kind of this relationship between the system and your personal inner space. It's kind of how Sherlock de Burand is putting that in the Third Reich of Dreams, that even dreams are not personal anymore. They are invaded by the reality that you live.

In the way of propaganda, in the way of posters, in the way of fears, in the way that you cannot trust your neighbor anymore because you don't know who is going to tell on you that you told this joke. And the important thing that it keeps happening in our world, it's not something that happened a long time ago because I'm coming, I'm half Russian, half Ukrainian, I have family on both sides, I still communicate with people on both sides, and within the last four and a half years that I've immigrated, it's fascinating in a horrible way that I see how the psyche is changing, how people, we had lots of arguments early on and we were discussing, now we don't talk. It's almost, it's not appropriate. People don't talk because you are afraid. And that's the inner journey that we wanted to explore. And in a sense, it can be treated as a separate theme in the dream research. Yeah, so a follow-up question in terms of the LBE exhibition.

Would you imagine that people are getting the VR experience and then they have access to the archive? Or are they getting onboarded into that this is what's happening? Or I'm just trying to get a sense of how you imagine it. It's actually, I think that it's very important that we saw this experience that needs create this embodied sensation that really opens up your mind into the theme of what happens with human psyche when we find ourselves in this completely changed reality and in a way during the work on this experience david already mentioned we see countries changing with see political shifts and i couldn't stop thinking that it's becoming more and more relevant it's kind of like a little bit of um a warning that Guys, just if you find yourself in the state that all of a sudden went nuts, most likely you are going to notice the change in your dreams. That's why, for example, I would love to hear the dreams that people in America are having for the last year and a half.

It's also very interesting that those dreams, most of them are happening in the moment of the rapid transition. It means that our psyche, during the time, it adapts. So, for example, the majority of the dreams that Charlotte Burand had in her book, they were collected overall between 1933 and 1939. She was a German-Jewish journalist, and after 1933, she was not able to work as a journalist anymore. and it's kind of the same. She started seeing very weird dreams herself and then she was collecting all the dreams that she could get hold of through her friends, her friends, psychologists, people on the street, anyone that she could reach. And she managed to escape Germany in 1939 so that's why she stayed alive and published this book much later in New York. But it's kind of like a very important theme that we want to come back to. And building this emotional arc

and going through VR is the first step. After that, you open this theme and you explore the exhibition in the form of printed materials. Or it can be ideally in our world because also Jane is working so much with space, with the theater around. We would love to work with the museums where it is a proper installation with physical objects, with some of the things that you can interact in the form of exhibition, but also read as many dreams as you feel like related to this specific theme to listen to the first-hand accounts and understand it properly. Yeah, and I just recently was getting into Charles Sanders' purse. He's got this whole idea of semiotics where there's a meaning space of potential and then there's a fixed object that is kind of pointing back to what the meaning is And then the interpretant is seeing whatever the object is and trying to understand what the meaning is. And so as I watch a VR piece, I think about that a lot in terms of there's a wide range of possibilities that creators can have.

They make choices in terms of the symbols they're going to use. And then hopefully there's a process where the person who's watching it can be able to see what's there and be able to kind of extrapolate what the meaning is. I think a lot of the dream logic pieces are basically doing that mechanic where you're doing a series of different symbols that are like walking through a dream. And that there's different layers of like very personal symbols that you understand as an individual. There's cultural symbols that you may see and that if you're from that culture, you may understand. And from outside of the culture, they may need to have it decoded and explained. And then there's like universal symbols that when you see it, you kind of see like the meaning. And so when I saw this piece, I felt like there were a lot of symbols, but I was having trouble decoding them in real time in terms of extrapolating back. And I'm wondering if a piece like this, if you want people to be able to kind of like see the symbols and be able to extrapolate the meaning, or if you're going for more of a general feeling or vibe, or if people don't understand it,

if there's a way to have a decoding process where people can kind of like understand what the intent was. because I felt a little confused in terms of what was happening, and I'd be hard-pressed to kind of, like, recount what even happened and then what it meant. And so I think that's a challenge of a piece like this, a dream logic piece, of kind of navigating this symbolic archetypal realm. But just curious to hear a little bit around how you imagine that process going, if you imagine people should be able to decode that, or if it's combined in a way that is more creating a feeling than being able to understand the specifics around what's being communicated. Yeah, I think creating a feeling is the most important thing. And basically, I think there are some symbols, but in general, they're not really kind of symbols. They're just spaces. Because, for example, this big space where you find yourself after a room, like this big stadium, it is not actually the symbol. It's just a kind of combination of different stadiums from different countries.

So in this case, I think it's because I don't really like working with symbols. I just for me, it's just no sense. So if something looks symbolic for you, it's maybe not what we kind of really wanted to put in. Let's say we wanted to put in vibe. Yes, maybe the aesthetic is kind of not really complicated, but it's something new. But in my opinion, it's, let's say, it also brings the mood that you're watching something new. And this universe is kind of a little new. for you, but I think that's it. I feel that actually for me, artistically, it was a super interesting experiment where, first of all, we have a pretty small team, but a very international team coming from very different backgrounds. I do believe that you might find this aesthetics a little bit different, but it's actually a very interesting cultural experiment because whenever we get an audience here in Venice that had experience of living or growing up in any of the countries that are closer related to either Germany or Soviet Union,

you just get this overwhelming reaction because they just get it. And I also want to point out specifically, maybe that's why my own personal journey, I think since probably 2022, since the war and all of those changes in my kind of personal life that completely changed everything. I've been so keen to bring creators and artists from that part of the world. And to be honest, as you know, I'm a Venice nerd. So I watched almost every single experience since 2019. there was not a single piece in Venice that ever came from an artist who grew up in Russia, for example. And so therefore it is an experiment for me because it's bringing a completely different culture. This artistic code speaks very well to those people who experience this code. But also I want to say that for me, I was trying to bring this whole team together, I can say,

And it was incredibly exciting to see the conversation that was happening between two people that probably shaped visually the majority of the experience, which is Jane, who brought such an intense research. Because you cannot imagine how our boards look with the references in Soviet architecture, in constructivism, in brutalism. It's just intense, but at the same time, she worked with the German artist. Her name is Jana Hansen. She works with 3D art, and she's bringing the German side. And it was not that we tried to repeat something or actually take some symbols or take some parts and just implement them. It was a blend. It was something completely new that was being born out of the language and the code and the artistic code that bring people with such a different background. And what is the result of that, which I personally find very exciting and I'm very happy that it came together this way, is a completely different space that the most important thing of the space is to translate the emotion and the feeling.

Either by being overwhelmed by the space or feeling very small in this large machinery that is happening around you, feeling lost or feeling uncertain. Because, for example, as Jane mentioned, the mechanics of room changing that is constantly changing behind your back. It's a very subtle feeling that we were trying to convey that the reality is not stable anymore. and also it's like when we were even discussing it early on it was this feeling it's like everything is supposed to look familiar but it's not and that was from the very very beginning that it's not a horror piece it talks about a very complex emotional and psychological state but we did not intentionally use any mechanics that would make you freak out basically it's different. It's supposed to be familiar, but then it's not. It's the reality has shifted. There is

something weird going on and you get this unsettling feeling that something is off. This is definitely by design, but it's a more complex relationship with a space that's supposed to give you the bodily sensation of being in this completely new reality that you found and you're trying to understand how you journey through that. Well, what I find interesting is, again, the personal background colors a bit of these things, these symbols you're talking about where people coming from Germany see something and people coming from Russia see something. But even though they are supposedly different systems that we are drawing inspiration from, it's a circle. They lead to the same direction, they lead to the same show of grandiosity, the same feeling of oppression, shape, size, and all of that. So rather than saying that this piece, I think, relies a lot on symbolism, I think it's a bit more indirect,

and it allows you to leave these spaces that communicate that specific emotion, rather than trying to tell you, hey, this is the emotion that you should have. yeah well it sounds like there's at least some people that are coming from either russian culture or german culture that they see it and they're able to understand i guess that's what i meant in terms of cultural meaning that is embedded into things that people who are from that culture understand how to decode it but people who are outside of that culture may not understand the full significance and i just remember a piece like bodiless and talking to the creator around how many sort of taiwanese symbols that were in there and how i had to have him go step by step kind of explain what he meant by this, what he meant by that. And so in this piece, I guess, if you're not using symbols explicitly and you're talking about creating spaces, then are you creating architectural pointers towards architecture that is reminding of these kind of more grandiose authoritarian and fascist entities? And less though that like there's a heart symbolizing love or something like that.

So less of an explicit symbol or archetype in that way, but more of that you're using these mashups of different forms in a way that is creating a larger architectural space that is alluding towards this. So, yeah, I don't know if that question makes sense. We use a lot of references, and I think that was really kind of important. And also, I think this experience has a super, like, geometric logic, because we find ourselves in a big space when we're coming to the room that is square, when we're coming to the stadium that is a circle and big, when we're coming to the journey that is kind of, let's say, just one line, when we are coming to the mural that is kind of, again, like a circle, but, like, oriented another way. So, I mean, in general, they're like, when we try to build it, we try to make it a little bit like poetry or something like this, because we wanted to figure out a lot of rhythms between different parts and how one part can be mirrored in another part. And that was the point for us. And, of course, references, because when I was speaking about dreams, of course,

it's like, okay, this woman saw this dream in the Soviet Union in the 30s somewhere next to the Ukraine, I don't know, city, Sumer. Okay, what I need to do? I need to go and try to figure out exactly how the houses there look like, understanding, for example, she's a teacher or she's a peasant or whatever. So, I mean, it's also kind of a lot of work trying to imagine what it's supposed to be. So, for example, for me, the most confusing thing was kind of a room because it was a text that the young doctor saw it. And there was no kind of, I don't know, no external links, let's say, to this person, of course. And I was thinking, okay, a young doctor who's living in Berlin and 30s, what kind of apartment, how it could look like. And then I figured we need some kind of style between Bauhaus and the Shakespeare style that came from when Hitler came to power. And so we need something in between and very specific kind of time. So in general, what I want to say, references really helped a lot, let's say. And what we wanted to do is a kind of also a collage with these references a little bit.

Yeah. Anything else you wanted to add? It's a complete question because I think that, as Jane said, It's not only about the feeling of having grandiose architecture, because if you go through the journey, exactly like Jane said, it's supposed to change a lot from one country thing to another. So, like, you have to find yourself in spaces that would create a feeling of your body in the space, whether it's a huge head floating towards you and you are being immersed into that. and then going in between the shifts when something is minor and kind of is supposed to feel normal and okay from the very beginning, but then it starts to shift and change, to going to something that is so grandiose that probably you would not experience it in real life and that needs to give you a completely different feeling of being in the middle of something that really makes you feel small, for example,

or really makes you feel that you're part of this machinery, that you're almost being introduced to be part of the system It very much this transformation that we talking about And Mirror is the peak of this transformation where we make it very visually understandable hopefully because you're literally, your avatar is changing, you're embodying the avatar, and this change is happening right in front of your eyes. But that's kind of the culmination. And the whole experience is talking specifically about this transformation that takes place deep inside human psyche. And probably it's also important to mention that what fascinates me the most, it's like we took those three timelines because, first of all, we have access to them. and once again the experience started in modern Russia because we have connection and we've lived there and we understand very deeply what is happening right now in there in terms of how people are going through the lives as well

but it's almost what is important to me that this is I see it as a universal mechanism I understand that you can put different symbols you can put different cultures you can put different contexts but when something like that happens it seems that there is a universal language behind that for example the amount of dreams that we found that is representing different encounters of people with the end of the world and a lot of symbolism there not even symbolism but a lot of dreams are talking about very similar things like for example in a lot of dreams there is a beautiful sunset or there's the most beautiful sunset that they've ever seen or the most beautiful colors. And that's kind of the ending that we have as well because it is really poetic and it's actually supposed to lift you up. But it's also coming from this commonality of how people coming from completely different worlds are processing that

and talking about those similar mechanisms happening deep inside. That's what fascinates me because I think that It's kind of like for me, it's almost like finding a universal language that allows us to speak about a very personal human experience beyond borders. Because I feel personal that if this happens in another society, I can relate and I know exactly what they're going through in a way. Maybe that's my already own connection, but that's how I feel about that. yeah this whole idea of how vr is a bit of language of dreams in a lot of ways and i feel like as time goes on i feel like there's going to be just like there's a cinematic language that's been developed in film i feel like there's going to be like a dream-like language that's developing within vr that i think we're able to use the affordances of our experience to be able to convey meaning in stories and so i feel like there's a question of like i always had like

if people were to take a film that was edited and mad max fury road has like an edit every 1.5 seconds and they were to go back in time and show that film to people would they understand it would they be able to read it or is it something that was the film language that sort of developed over time that was in collaboration with the people as they were developing it so there's It's sort of a theoretical question, but I guess it's more of a matter of, is this the type of language and grammar that sort of co-evolves with the audiences, also increasing their level of symbolic fluency to be able to kind of decode and understand what's being said? And so that's my suspicion, is that in the future, a hundred years from now, it'll be like the people who are doing this kind of decoding of their dreams in a Jungian way or getting these deep meaning that the language of VR is going to potentially increase the symbolic fluency of everybody who's watching these experiences because it's just kind of a natural part of the grammar that I think after coming to Venice for a number of years and a fellow Venice nerd who's seen a lot of the pieces over the years

that there is a sense of the affordances of what things are meaning. But there's still gaps in terms of what personal symbols and cultural symbols and universal symbols. And so, yeah, that's my sense is that over time that maybe part of the evolution of VR itself will be that the audience will have to also be able to be more sophisticated and being able to consume and read that. So I think what you're saying really resonates with me, and I'm just curious if you have any thoughts on that. What I find very interesting that you're saying is dreams are spatial, you know. You embody somebody else, so VR is perfect for that. But what I've seen is that VR is being used a lot to represent these liminal spaces which don't exist anywhere, but they resonate a lot with audiences, as you've seen by the success of the film of the back rooms. So I'm sure that VR is one of the most interesting ways to convey that. We will see with time. And I also think that I totally agree with David. And it's also important to know that it's from my experience,

because maybe once again it's me, and when you start diving into a certain topic, I feel that now dreams are following me everywhere, because I see research about recurring dreams in different contexts, the typical dream of immigrants. I see documentaries being developed about dreams, or maybe just this theme is picking up in general. But also it's kind of important for me that I think it's the first experience that is trying to put you into the dream firsthand. And that's why it's also important as an experiment, is something that is working for the audience, is something that we see people react because you find yourself somewhere in a dream where you're trying to understand what is going on. We are very familiar to hearing the recollections of the dreams. It's like, I saw that I went and I felt this and then this happened. But what if you embody that? This is a completely different experience

that we can provide to the audience. And I've never seen any project do anything, and I think that for VR in general, that's a very interesting approach, to try without explaining you, to put you into the sense, I'm dreaming and I'm in this space and something is happening. What is happening to me? So from that perspective, I am really excited by the feedback that we're getting here because it seems that this whole journey was worthwhile because people do get this sensation and they are very moved by the piece and we are getting this emotional feedback that for me is very inspiring. I don't know, as David Lynch said there are different, so developing an idea is kind of fishing yes, because each idea is kind of a fish that you need to catch and the fishes are different for example there exist fishes for sport for whatever, for music

and something like this, but dreams I think are specifically fish for VR so let's say Awesome, and finally love to hear what each of you think the ultimate potential of virtual reality and immersive storytelling might be and what might be able to enable i love answering this question i think it's i've been here before well after working in this field for so many years um i feel that we are only getting started unfortunately and fortunately because for me especially after working on this piece for such a long time it is translating and finding this universal language that people coming from absolutely different cultures and backgrounds can try to convey to each other. Not through the language, because unfortunately we see that language is failing us very often. We cannot agree on a single topic most of the time if we just have a direct conversation.

And what really helps shape societies globally is having a shared experience. Having shared experience and then sharing this journey together, whether in a physical space or in a virtual space, is allowing us to at least come one step closer to understanding what the hell the other person is thinking and doing. And I feel that this is the core potential. I just absolutely wish that people would be more open to try to understand and embody and feel what other people are going through. For that, once again, even if I'm trying to escape VR as a medium because it's so hard to work in it, I know I will keep returning to that because there are powers and there are languages that cannot be repeated anywhere else. and I'm always fascinated by those specific pinpoints that make immersive and spatial and embodied storytelling

so different from anything else. Wow. Okay. Actually, what I expect from VR maybe is kind of, I want really to see more crazy things and maybe more art things. I don't know. I think the technologies are so incredible and maybe we just need to involve, I don't know, more people from different fields and I think it really makes sense when people from other backgrounds are coming and trying to test it and of course this was really challenging journey for me because I never worked with VR before but in general I think that could be kind of something completely new and something that could bring let's say art to the other level if we can somehow bring these things together let's say yeah so very interesting question I think that what VR does well is space, motion, and putting you into the perspective of others. They call it the empathy machine, as Alina often says. What I also find interesting is that there are some experiences

which put you together with other guests, other people, but you experience different realities at the same time. And I'm very curious to see how that goes in terms of storytelling because no other medium allows you to be in the same room and see different things. I think we will be heading away from seated experiences into something which may be true that easier technology, but a lighter technology, but I don't think the problem right now is the technology, but we still have to iterate on what's possible with storytelling. So this direction is going with. Awesome. Is there anything else that's left and said you'd like to say to the broader immersive community? Any final thoughts? I hope to see in 10 years. I hope you're still there Thank you I don't know, thank you so much I found so many nice people here I know so many people here that are super nice super interesting and it's really such a good thing to be here in this community I mean, sorry It's a great community

everybody is very supportive everybody is very curious everybody is in it to create something beautiful and to go forward with new forms of storytelling and it's still something that needs to be built completely and it's very interesting and exciting all the time. Awesome. Well, thanks so much for joining me here on the podcast and I hope to check out Library of Dreams again at some point just to kind of, after this conversation, I feel like I have a bit more context and I think I was sort of walking in with a lot of expectations about what I imagined it to be and it was sort of different than that but also just to kind of let it seep into me and pay attention to the emotions of the contrast between the different spatial journeys that you're taking on. And, yeah, and also I'm a huge fan of this idea of dreams, and I feel like there's so much overlap between the dream logic and the different types of experiences, like Yesterday Maybe and Honey Boys are two examples. What's that? Lucid Doll is another project that I saw about lucid dreaming.

Completely different, absolutely, but very beautiful. so these kind of like aesthetic within vr where you're taken through like even last year with second place price winner of less than five grams of saffron this kind of like dream logic that can be really super powerful of using symbolism to tell a story and yeah i feel like it's a the semiotics of the transmission of meaning is like always the challenge of the decoding process of whether or not people can read the symbols that are there or at least the challenge of vr creators is that when they move into the realms of abstraction, then trying to create things that can still evoke feelings, even if the meaning of the specifics aren't there. And you mentioned bodiless. I think that it's definitely, at least in my perception, it's definitely rooted in this work as well. I love absolutely this work. So it's a genre that I, and then the art of change, I think is another kind of in that spirit of this dream logic type of piece that, you know, I'm very much drawn to.

So anyway, I'm a fan of the genre of the, let's say, call it earth and air elements of the spatial dream logic of going through and telling stories in a new spatial way. And, yeah, so I look forward to see how this continues to develop. And, you know, if you continue to have an exhibition and all this other installation to augment the overall experience, I think is really exciting to see where this all goes here in the future. So thanks again for joining me here on the podcast to help break it all down. Thank you so much. Thank you. thank you thanks so much for listening to the voices of vr podcast and i just want to say that i'm really trying to live into the transformation economy meaning i want to give away all this information for free make it publicly accessible for not only you but the entire community and if you find value in that then please do consider supporting me on patreon you know i'm on this journey of trying to reach my 1 000 true fans and if i have just five dollars a month from that 1 000 I'll be in a much more solid and stable financial position. So really need your help to be able to get to that point.

So if you enjoy what I'm doing here at the Voices of VR podcast, then please do consider supporting me at patreon.com slash Voices of VR. Thanks for listening. Thank you.