The May 2012 exhibition for Now. Here. This. features Dreamy Me, a project by Halsey Burgund. 

“Every night I leave my smartphone next to my bed. Whenever I wake up with a dream still in my mind, I use a custom app to record it, upload it to a central server and then fall back asleep as soon as possible.

I have always been fascinated with dreams and the mysterious mental landscape they illuminate. I wanted to create a piece within which all my dreams – each created within my own subconscious at some point – could live and co-exist in a continuously expanding “make-believe” environment. The result is Dreamy Me, an evolving virtual sound art installation made up of my sleepy dream recollections and an original musical composition.

Dreamy Me is a dynamic piece. I will be adding dreams to the project throughout the month so that the base raw material is growing, but also, each audio stream generated as part of the project will be mixed algorithmically in real time so that no two streams will ever be exactly the same. Different dreams will be played back at different times and in different sequences; they will be contiguous or overlapping with different neighbors, both musical and vocal.

Sometimes the dreams will peacefully and musically co-exist and other times they will stomp all over each other. I cannot and do not want to control the details of these interactions. I have created the environment, posted the instructions on the wall and continue to release new dreams into it. After that, I relinquish control, just like when I go to sleep and let my subconscious take over.”