THE DREAM MACHINE

“The Dream Machine” is an anti-utopia of a 'digital' world in which the life resides in the global social net. By transporting reality into the virtual domain the man creates his digital phantom. It impassively fixes and stores the whole life of the human being in the system from cradle to grave.
Global corporation C.U.B.E. gains full access to the human beings' consciousness and forms the total control and manipulation net...
The protagonist escapes the paradigm. In search of the truth he sets out to the core of the system, into inner self.

The city like a huge beehive stores, replicates, digests and engulfs. This city suffers, it devours itself.

The age when the human being becomes a number, a mere set of digits whose life is stored in DNA, C.U.B.E. (Consciousness, Unity, Being, Existence) corporation emerges. It imposes a new social network which discards any limitations and taboos.

Overpopulation of cities and the expansion of the social network all over the world boost a social experiment – a consciousness digitalisation software ‘Memory cube – save yourself’. It becomes endemic.

The C.U.B.E.’s next step is digital counterparts who exist in the network in parallel with their originals. By creating the digital counterparts, C.U.B.E. acquired full access to the consciousness of a human being. It was aware of everything, from bank accounts to habits, phobias and weaknesses.

A tide of protests did not stop the software expansion. Leading multinational corporations joined C.U.B.E. and supported the further development of the software. Synthetic reality was engulfing the real one, our whole world becoming C.U.B.E.

C.U.B.E. controlled everyone. Cities were getting desolate, whole districts were deserted. Only very few people stayed in the slums hoping for the changes. The rest turned into C.U.B.E.

At some point, a man appears who breaks away from the system. The system that controls all around. The system in which everyone voluntarily became their own copies, their own phantoms of selves.

He devotes his life to the search, the search of answer. Ask yourself whether I do exist. You’ve got your clothes, your work, your body, your ideas, but is that you?

Every time he goes somewhere, he has a feeling he already has been there, as if he was travelling in the past. Every night he dreams the same – he dreams of being a raven in sky and each time the dream ends abruptly.

He sees signs which sometimes are so haunting you stop noticing them.

Rumours and legends are that outside the city in the middle of nowhere, there lives a man, a clairvoyant, a voodoo, an oracle. No one has seen him, but it’s only him who can give the answer and show the way with his "Dream Machine".

The voodoo has frozen in anticipation of the stranger between the two worlds, but he sees more than the rest. The raven is his eyes.

The time is coming for him to play the role of the conductor, to dispatch stranger in the depth of his consciousness.

Home of the voodoo, the phantom ship lost in the wilderness. The ship is the symbol and the portal into subconscious.

"Dream Machine" is inside the ship. It is a device which transfers a person into another reality, the one which contains answers to all the questions.

There is no way back if you use the "Dream Machine", having crossed the line, you cannot get back, but the answer is only behind the line.

Having applied the ‘Dream Machine’ the stranger passes into another reality. He enters the digital synthetic world created by the collective consciousness of C.U.B.E. corporation.

Making his way, the stranger encounters the source. He sees C.U.B.E.’s superconsciousness as a gigantic face image formed by multiple consciousness of digitalised people.

The stranger learns the truth. The truth is that the whole population had been digitalised. The people became projections of selves in the form of information placed in the synthetic C.U.B.E. world which recreates reality.

By deciding to break away from the system the stranger realises that his whole reality is the dream, the product of C.U.B.E. collective consciousness.

Soaring in the space the stranger fathoms the clue of the infinitely repeated dreams in which he soars as a raven.

The stranger turns into the raven. He has transformed into raven in reality, the loop has closed. What seemed to be a dream became a reality, what seemed to be real became a dream. A dream of the raven soaring in the sky.

                                            BACKSTAGE

I was working on the Project "The Dream Machine" for more than two years. It was a difficult and very interesting process for me. It gave me an opportunity to meet with very understanding people, to get a whole lot of new knowledge and to realise that our fantasies indeed become the reality.

I would like to acknowledge with gratitude the help and support of the people who took part in the Project: Jazz musician Jerry Kim – Voodoo, a wonderful person and my good friend Vlad Bulatov- stranger, Marina Trimbitskaya – a talented fashion designer who created the voodoo’s costume and additional accessories. Special thanks go to Yuri Kolodyazhny for the opportunity to work on the ‘flightbike’ at the Shcheglovskaya Kovka workshop and Vladimir Lapin for the opportunity to work on the Project at ‘The 5th Floor’ studio. Invited guest: Ryasha the Raven who performed as Raven in the Project.

Bespoke props and dresses were created for the Project. We designed a ‘flightbike’ as well as the ‘Dream Machine’ which according to the storyline takes the character into the subconscious.

In this Project, along with the photography, I used computer graphics which I learnt at Real Time School in Moscow.

I’d like to hope you will find the Project interesting and that it will stimulate your imagination. Don’t forget: our ideas are physical.

More projects you can find on my website: www.stas-stankovskiy.com