World Dream Atlas is one of the most fascinating oneiric projects around, a place where the world’s dreams are gathered and float among themselves.
More and more research confirms that humans are almost entirely subconscious, detached from the internal mechanisms of our minds. With the exception, of course, of dreams: that subordinate reality that becomes significant if we are able to translate it into something rational. But, what happens when dreams are experienced on their own terms, without interpreting them or “translating” them so that they make sense? In principle, an extraordinary atlas is created.
Dr. Roc Morin is the curator of one of the most fascinating oneiric projects. The World Dream Atlas is, precisely, about dreams on their own terms. The Facebook page collects the dreams of any person who wishes to share them so that they form part of a global collection. And what happens there, beyond the individual or collective interpretation, is that dreams can exist together, like a semantic tide that only they know how to navigate.
The project has for almost a year indexed the dreams of all kinds of people all over the world in honor, perhaps, of extravagance and irrationality. And one of the things that stand out is that everybody flies.
“I have found that, across cultures, dreams often lead to a return to mysticism or the divine, and allow people to get involved in magical thinking without stigmas,” Morin says. “But I have also noticed trends according to populations.”
Thus violent nightmares float above the war zone of Mexico; the blessings of gods and goddesses are frequently reported in India or cars that fly appear in the dreams of taxi drivers. World Dream Atlas is a fascinating cartography where unreality finds its similarity and the dreams of the world return to their state of flotation.
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