Vintage DB 109: Alix Anne Shaw’s “Other People’s Dreams,” DB 22
“Other People’s Dreams” was a part of the art section of DB 22, Summer 2015, but is less easily classified when it comes to the type of artwork that it is. This is the explanation provided by its creator, Alix Anne Shaw:
“Other People’s Dreams is an interactive archive of dreams that explores the relationship between the human unconscious and our collective digital consciousness. To access the archive, viewers may scan the QR code tapestry with a mobile device or go directly to www.otherpeoplesdreams.net. Visitors are invited enter the dreams of others, experiment with “weaving” the text, and add their own dreams to the archive.”
But “Other People’s Dreams” has also been exhibited as a performance piece, featuring Shaw herself sleeping beneath the QR code tapestry that gives viewers access to the dream archive. The best part is, you too can become part of this unique and interesting project by contributing your own dreams to the archive. Or, if you’re not much of a dreamer, simply enter the unconciousness of others by perusing the catalog of recorded dreams and sew together a patchwork of many dreams by choosing to “weave the tapestry.” However you choose to experience it, this Vintage DB is one you’ll be dreaming of for a long time to come.
Anne Shaw is the author of Dido in Winter (Persea 2014) and Undertow, winner of the Lexi Rudnitsky Poetry Prize (Persea 2007). Her poems and reviews have appeared in Harvard Review, Denver Quarterly, Crab Orchard Review, The Los Angeles Review, Barrow Street, and New American Writing. She has also been featured on Poetry Daily, Verse Daily, and From the Fishouse. A graduate of Yale and George Mason University, Shaw also holds an MFA in sculpture from the School of the Art Institute in Chicago. She and her pit bull enjoy scaring small children and eating chicken bones from under picnic tables. For more about Shaw’s artwork and poetry, check out anneshaw.org.
