Dreams Unbounded

This Project uses visual language as a universal translator to
communicate the dreamer’s thoughts, imaginings, and feelings to the viewer.
 
I collected 365 dreams through a large, on-line community from China and categorized the descriptions into six emotions: fear, intensity, sadness, estrangement, contentment, and wonderment.
 
I selected three dreams from each category and produced a series of visual works.
A symbolic, poetic, and ethereal visual language was used to represent the selected dreams.
 
The rest of the 365 collected dreams—not yet translated—are placed in a document box.
Using dreams as the source, the project has a potential to bridge the gap in communication between the two distinctive cultures of the dreamers and viewers.
 
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Gdagary’s Dream
05/2012
It was a rainy day. I walked passed a fruit shop and there was an especially red apple
on top of a stack of apples. The very red apple was the only apple not wet. I felt very awkward.
Back home in bed, under my mom’s pillow, there is a black wig.
The color of the dream was very bright.
 
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Xingjiao Tang’S Dream
5/26/2010
I walked into an exhibition, I was not sure of what the exhibit was about.
After I walked into the room, I saw large glasses separating the room into several compartments
of different sizes and shapes. The glass was from ceiling to the floor. Every compartment was
filled with water. I could only view from outside.
 
I stood outside of one of the glass compartments and there were goldfishes in it, but the fish
were much bigger than regular fish. They were almost bigger than my head.
 
They were all different colors, white, white with red spots, purple/red, and purple/red with white spots.
I looked at the fishes swimming in the water. Then I saw there was something else in another compartment.
It was something with a fish’s head and a human body.
 
It looked like a male, it turned its head as if gazing up while it was swimming.
The head was still like a human shape but it had a fish shell and fins around its eyes, nose and mouth.
The fins were floating with the water flowing lightly.
It was weird.
 
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Yi Wen’s Dream
10/02/2011
It seemed to be during war time, aircraft was flying in the sky and people were
rushing to escape. I was squating on a beach, there was a strange creature by me.
It has a rainbow color and was moving like a snail. I stared at it, then my family came around,
they were talking about where to escape to, and they said it will soon be flooded.
 
Suddenly the rainbow creature laid a big, transparent egg. My family and I were all shocked,
and forgot to run. We took the creature to inland so it would not get washed away by the ocean.
 
After laying the egg, the rainbow creature started moving again.
It’s body began to change colors as if it glowed. And it changed its shape from an oval
to a rectangle as it walked, then, it became an oval again.
 
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Ai Wei’s Dream
7/18/2010
It was raining, me and my friend walked out of school, and saw the city was all flooded. My friend rode his bike towards my home with me sitting on the back. The flood was almost as high as the bike seat. We rode for a while, and went to an intersection where the flood was higher. My friend kept peddling, but the flood was so big that it pushed us back. So, we got off the bike and went to an alley, trying to find another way home. The alley was messy and there were lots of people, it looked like the slums in a movie. Then I woke up.
The dream was dark, because of the rain, the sky was gloomy.
 
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Yuan’s Dream
 
This was a dream that I had often while in primary and secondary school.
 
During recess, students were running in the hallway. I was walking upstairs to go back to the classroom. But all of a sudden I got trapped on one floor and couldnt get out. I walked up one flight of stairs, then began to walk up the second flight, but then instead of going up, the stairs went downward.
 
I was running up and down on the staircase, the class was about to begin. Other students walked passed me and went up the stairs. I followed them, but it became downstairs again. I was anxious and sweating.
 
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Zhelong Zhou’s Dream
5/6/2010
In a quiet summer night, I was running in an alley with dim lights, trying to escape
from my enemy. I was holding a melting popsicle. The sweet ice water flew down onto my arms, then dropped onto the ground like blood from wounds. I was by myself, but just ten minutes ago
I was not. I had a companion whose name was G.
 
G called me to come out of my home at dawn. She handed me a popsicle.
She asked me solemnly : “Hold this and don’t eat it until you have to.” G held one as well.
Then she took my arm and started running: “ Y is coming! We gotta leave!”
I looked back but all I saw was a shadow. The shadow became bigger and bigger as the sun went down. “Stop looking at it, Y is in the shade and you can’t see it!” G’s hand was sweating, but she kept running. All of a sudden I slipped, and fell onto the ground.
After I got up, I can’t find G anymore, nor the shadow that was behind us. Her popsicle was spinning on the ground. It seemed like both of them had disappeared.
 
I picked up G’s popsicle, it was shimmering, with some dirt on it. I was about to wipe the dirt off
but I heard G’s yell. I looked at the little dark spot of dirt and that was G. The shadow was still after her.
They both fell off the popsicle onto the ground with the melted sweet ice water. Everything became so quiet, all I could hear in the dark night was the mourning of insects.
 
I threw away her popsicle, wiped my tears off, started to run again, and I never stopped.
 
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Table Gu’s Dream
3/2/2012
My family finally agreed to let me keep a pet cat. My white kitty looked very pretty but it was naughty.
I fed it a sleeping pill. Then it jumped in bed to sleep. I woke it up, it opened its eyes, some white liquid flew from its eyes, then the liquid filled its eyes, and it was suddenly dead.
I was so scared. I took the kitty under a water tap and washed it...then it became a few slices of transparent membranous fragments. I threw them out of the window.
 
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Jany Zhang’s Dream
 
I was running in the dream, a devastated middle-aged man was chasing behind me.
He held a knife in his hand. I was so scared and running on the street. He almost reached me.
I ran into an alley, there was an unlocked steel gate and I ran inside.
 
I thought I was able to escape, but I heard the gate close...I knew he found me! I ran into a
residental building and went upstairs. I was so tired and thirsty and don’t know how long I have
been running, but when I looked down, I saw the man staring at me!
 
I was so frightened, but I ran slower and slower and I felt him coming closer.
There’s a stack of brooms, dustpans, boxes and cabinets. I’m short so I hid myself behind them.
The man came up, and kept going upstairs.
 
I thought I was safe, so I ran downstairs, the man could not reach me anymore because
he didn’t know I was downstairs.
 
I was running and running, and finally got to the first floor, and I looked up,
suddenly something fell on to my head. I looked into the mirror, it was the man’s head!
I became him!
 
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Laucy’s Dream
 
This dream was very simple. There were only two colors in the dream.
The background was either all black or all white...
There was a conveyor, a conveyor I couldn’t see very clear.

It took endless boxes to me. The first box was small and then the next box was bigger
and the next box was bigger and the next box was even bigger. The boxes overwhelmed me
until I couldn’t breathe, out of fear, I awoke.
 
I kept having this dream when I was 4 or 5 years old.
Everytime I was about to awake from the threat, I would say to myself,
“I can handle the box no matter how big it is.” Then I was no longer scared.
 
Maybe it was because of my parent’s divorce. I did care although I pretended not to.
 
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Tao Xi’s Dream
 
I’ve never been to a moutain covered with snow, but it’s not hard to imagine!
The snow was white and shinning under the sun’s reflection. The mountain is very hard to climb.
 
I was climbing up the mountain in deep snow. The snow was over my knees,
almost at my wrist level! I climbed half way, ohh I was so tired. So I layed down,
took out a cigarette, but I can’t get the lighter to work. So I just held the cigarette in my mouth,
it tasted like nothing. The ice was soft and stabbing cold.
 
After I rested, I kept climbing and climbing and climbing up the mountain.
Where were the people I came with? I was all alone, the others were ahead of me.
 
Huh . . .(sighs) I kept climbing. There was sound all around. It sounded as if it was far away,
then it became closer, and then it became noisy. I looked around, I saw no one.
I imagine that to an onlooker in the distance, I would look like a little black dot surrounded
by a vast mountain blanketed in snow. As the viewer zoomed in, I became bigger and they could see
that I was wearing a white snow jacket.

I stopped imagining and kept climbing . . .
As I kept climbing, the beautiful scene with me as a black spot on the snow reminded me
of the movie, “Love Letter”.  I looked back at this great mountain and suddenly it became clear
what was in my heart. I called my friend on the radio and they were on the top of the mountain.
“What the fuck!” This mountain is not as high as it seems. I took a deep breathe and knew
I would finish climbing the mountain. Ha, Ha, Ha, Ha . . .
 
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Ghost choir’s Dream
 
I was standing on top of a tree,
watching the brilliant fireworks, in the city, across the river.
 
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Kiki’s Dream
 
When I was about 4 years old, I had a high fever.
I had a dream. I saw a row of stone figures. There are no people, nothing happend in the dream with the exception of this scene. The scene was vast, the stone figures were huge, sky and ground was dark and grey.
I could not tell the details on the figure, but the shape looks like the Easter Island statues.
 
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Qiao’s Dreams
 
The sweetest dream: In the dream the alley out of my home was filled with candy.
I was swimming in the ocean of candy. There were all types of colorful candy,
M&Ms, Skittles...
 
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Dudu’s Dream
8/29/2012
Pea flowers blossoming in a night garden.
The pink petals were shining in the darkness. He walked me out into the hallway.
A long endless staircase was at my feet. We said goodbye in the hallway.
I couldn’t remember what we talked about. The hallway felt familiar to me,
maybe I have lived here for a long time.
 
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Chenyi Liao’s Dream
 
I was frying shrimp. The peeled off shrimp casing and head with feeler and eyes were
left on the floor. White ceramic tiles, white stove, black pot, pink-orange shrimp shell on the floor,
and shrimps were sizzling in the pot. The scene was pretty.
 
It quickly changed from a wide-ranging view to a close-up of a closed roly poly  on the floor.
The roly poly unfolded itself, then I stepped on it, because I was frying shrimp and didn’t notice it. The roly poly broke into two parts, around with the shrimp casing and head with feeler and eyes . . .
 
I put the cooked shrimp into a plate. And then, this is the funny part:
the roly poly on the floor started moving, putting its two parts body back in to one,
and grabbed a shrimp head to put onto its own head. Unfortunately, there was a shrimp
feeler stuck on the shrimp head and the roly poly didn’t notice. It paused,
and had a very upset look on the shrimp face, and said:
It was such a bad day!
 
Then it moved into the gap beteen the dishwasher and cabinets.
All I could see was that shrimp feeler moving.
 
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tiit’s Dream
 
My relationship with my grandmother was never good. When she passed away,
none of her grandchildren were around. Since I was little, she barely took care of me.
My mom asked her to take care of me but she left me alone in a stroller and went to work.
I have never felt love from her. But the third year after her death, I had a dream about her.
 
It was in the summer, my grandmother was sitting in the front yard
of our old house, holding a straw fan in her hand, and relaxing in the cool shade.
I came back home and she saw me.
Then she asked me to go inside the house. Since I didn’t have much affection for her,
I told her I’ll come back later. Then I went to my auntie’s place and played with my cousin.
After staying there for quite a while, my cousin asked if I had gone home and saw grandmother.
I said, yeah, I just saw her in front of our house, but I didn’t go inside.
My cousin then asked me to go back and first take a look at grandmother,
and then after we would go to work in the farmland.
 
So I went back to the house, but only to find out my grandmother was no longer there.
The stool she was sitting on and the straw fan were still there, but there was no one in the house.
I ran back to my auntie’s place and asked everyone to come to look for grandmother.
 
The dream lasted so long. I was looking for her all day in the dream.
I even went near the river, which was considered a very dangerous place for a child.
I still couldn’t find her. Then I woke up and cried.
 
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Ji Lingzi’s Dream
 
I walked down the table desperately, bare footed and rushed out of door.
There was a dark ocean outside. All I could see was the sand by the indoor light, and the dark seawater.
I walked into the ocean, although I was wearing thick socks, it still felt cold.
But I still walked into the water, and you rushed over and grabbed me back onto the beach.
I looked around, I saw a wood house covered in mist and rescuers speaking French.
He said, this is the second time I saw you here.
I was angry, I’ve never been here before! I yelled at him. I was very angry.
And you came out from a compartment, looking at me with puffy red eyes.
I’ve never seen you like this, but I understand the meaning of the tears. I was defeated.
You pushed everyone away,  and rushed to me.
I ran to you,
I was crying, you were crying.
We held each other tightly
no one said anything.
 
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Yang Li’s Dream
10/01/2011
In the dream my body became transparent and started sinking through the bed, then through each floor, until it reached the ground. Then my body sunk through the ground, and came upon an ocean. My body touched the ocean and kept sinking and sinking.
 
This dream lasted so long, but I never reached the sea bottom, and I didn’t know why.
While growing up I always felt that I was losing myself. I was afraid of becoming the kind of people around me, and I tried to resist and hold true to his self.
 
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Box of 365 dream descriptions
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