Nos Reves
 
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DREAMS ARE PROBABLY the thing that I find most interesting about life. Much of my work is associated with dreaming, or inspired by dreams that I have had. Nos Rêves, translated into English from French, literally means Our Dreams. This magazine/book attempted to capture dream-scenarios submitted by trusted friends, and excerpts from my journals, in visual and typographical forms. Short paragraphs of experiences and visions transformed into strange interpretations on paper, making the entire piece as a whole a very rich piece that doesn't even require you to start at the beginning to enjoy, (almost like a dream itself). A book is linear, and a dream doesn't necessarily have to be. This juxtaposition between the two arrangements of experiences allowed me to be clearly creative with my layout. Each spread represents a different type of dream scenerio, compiled from my subjects, and my own specific dreams. THE FINAL BOOK was printed on rough newsprint, and bound in a French bind (appropriate) with rubber cement as to not warp the light stock. The covers were mounted on particle board, and mounted to the index with industrial black gaffers tape. Another version was left open with no back-bind letting the entire book to be opened into an accordion, but because of the weight of the newsprint, this version of the book turned out to be very delicate. Another updated version of this book was made for a contest sponsored by Adobe, but I never saw it again after I sent it away. Currently there are two existing copies, and they sit somewhere in storage sheltered from moisture in a Ziploc.

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[editors note; excerpt from book]:

 
DREAMING IS THAT MYSTERIOUS experience that we are all so intimately familiar with, but find so impossible to put into words. Our nightly dreams are re-experienced by short anecdotal stories, recordings in dream journals, or simply forgotten. Quite possibly the only way to remember these eccentric nocturnal fantasies is to replay the events in our head, all the while attempting to recapture the same peculiar trance.

Dreams oft define our experiences, fantasies, and emotions. If we were to view our sleep patterns as a collective, five of our twenty years sleeping were spent dreaming. Five full years of bizarre experience that goes unrecorded, only to be lost through altered memories and distorted recollection.

Some people simply don't dream as they sleep. It may be a case of not registering their brains' nightly activity, or their nightly dreams slip so far into their subconscious that they are simply forgotten when they awake. Meanwhile, someone may dream something so deeply surreal that there is simply no way to justify its explanation by putting it into English. They are unfathomably peculiar and are almost impossible to call to mind and re-tell with any form of logic. Others dream of situations that seem so realistic and true to life that they couldn't help but to remember such an intense experience. They can be so confused as they wake, that they feel as though their dreams were true-life occurrences.
Dream content is a handful of memories selected by a random biological process. This process is most prominent when we experience abrupt thematic changes that are so characteristic of our dreams. However, the examination of any dream will show a unifying concept subjugated throughout its radical thematic discontinuity.

At the most basic level, our dreams make connections. They bring together material that our brain separates while we are conscious. Objects that remind us of certain things are interpreted as situations that seem completely random as we experience them. Dreaming may also have a subconscious effect on our lives, affecting personality and style.

What follows is an attempt at visual communication concerning some of our personal dreams. Thank you all who contributed to this project. Your personal concepts and dreamt realties are as bizarre as they are fantastic and beautiful.
© 2002 GDUNNE