_Dreams of Your Life

Dreams of Your Life is an interactive companion piece to the documentary Dreams of A Life by Carol Morley, which tells the story of a young woman who died in her small London apartment in 2003 but was not discovered for three years. The story of almost unbelievable isolation in a massive modern city brings to the fore questions about relationships, connection, loneliness, and the meaning of a human life.

A team, including writer A.L. Kennedy and photographer Lottie Davies, sets out to craft an interactive experience that would allow each user to examine these issues in the context of their own life. Dreams of Your Life is a simple and austere photo-essay, with written messages from an invisible interlocutor who asks users increasingly personal questions. The mix of intimacy and unsettling directness creates the framework for a powerful exchange and a deeply emotional experience.

Visitors to the site are prompted to engage the approximately thirty minute exchange on their own, but because users can elect to leave traces of their question and answer session, Dreams of Your Life is also a place of social exploration in which one user can access the answers and experience of another. Just as with the site’s content, the project’s design as both a shared and isolated experience forces us to reflect on what it is to be alone and together in the on- and offline worlds.