multiversallogs | birds singing in the sycamore tree

birds singing in the sycamore tree

As night falls on Baedal, the city is almost quiet. The streets have a few last minute workers returning home, but by now, most citizens have already gone by the temples and picked up their vurt, ready to lay down and dream.

After placing a not-feather in one's mouth, there's a moment where it fizzes against the tongue before sliding coolly down the back of the throat and pulling the user down into sleep. A series of impressions, more sensation than anything concrete, appears before the user and this is how one chooses which Dreamer to enter.

Threaded | Flat

This an underwater dream. Cool calm floating serenity. Colourful luminous fish of all sizes swim in schools around the visitors - some of whom are clearly new to aquatic life and may be trying on some unfamiliar shapes to deal with it. The drink here comes in bubbles, there are no glasses or cups.

This dream is a building, or maybe it's several buildings as designed by a great fan of MC Escher. Staircases, landings and parts of floor plans have become intertwined in ways that define euclidean geometry. It has been furnished with generous plush sofas (lion paws and everything), floor pillows and elaborate rugs that sometimes stretch far enough to cover more than one plane. There is food here too, and drink presented in elegant crystal carafes. There is no clear up or down, gravity seems to shift and adjust itself according to where the dreamer goes.

Everything is very flat and brightly coloured in this dream. Visitors may find themselves outside of their bodies, watching a 2D representation of themselves interact with a stylised and equally 2D version of what must be inspired by the Apache back home in Baedal. The perspective may be odd, but the feeling, the music and the drink is absolutely familiar.

The forest dream has tall trees and all the leaves are really sleeping hummingbirds nesting among open flowers. Dimly glowing moths drift gently to and fro illuminating a clearing where hanging cornucopias offer visitors an endless supply of fruit and pastries. There are soft mounds of fragrant grass to sit on and a few swings that seem to have grown naturally out of vine. Strange and familiar animals sleep or wander sedately at the outskirts of the clearing.

This dream takes place at the heart of a nebula. It's surrounded by the light of millions of distant stars and soft glowing gases of blue, purple and green. Visitors can float free from the restrictions of gravity (and sometimes even form) if they choose, or they can stay the solid glass floor where refreshments are served. Space can incredibly vast and awe-inspiring, it is thanks to the logic of dreams that it keeps from being starkly intimidating as well.

This dream is held in the center, grassy square of a castle that is somehow both small enough to remain unintimidating, yet large enough to hold an obstacle course and racks of stadium seating. Vendors walk among the crowd offering snacks and drinks, while those who wish to participate in the steeplechase event are encouraged to make their way down to the field for pre-game body painting.

The dream that is the Network glows with neon lights and thrums with a neural energy. There are many interconnected rooms with many screens and there is even a bar that serves stims and things that glow strongly in the dark. Visitors are encouraged to take on some aspects of the digital environment and may pull visual representations of code and text out of thin air.

One of those sprawling summer days that seems like a memory even as you're living it. Sunlight—warm and reassuring as a clasp to the shoulder—pours down over the diamond. The grass has been trimmed down to an immaculate carpet of green, foul lines freshly chalked. As infielders lob the ball around it lands with a crisp snap, the sound carrying like a gasp in a silent theater. Calls of “peeeeanuts!” and “cold beer!” boom through the stands.

It's a space at once vast and intimate.

In this dream there's no color. It's not colorless; it's as if color never was. The spaces within bear no relation to one other. Enter a room, a courtyard, a field, and it seems to expand, to unfurl. The center never to be arrived at. Objects throw sculpted shadows not always their own. People move with smooth precision: there's grace even in a faltering step, a nervous lick of the lips. Refreshments are served on trays, waiting on tables that have already been set, or just there when reached for.

Threaded | Flat

ADETOKUNBO

MAURITS

SANAA

VIDAR

WHETU