Bird's Eye View

Be the first to take online interactive experience Dreams Of Your Life, written by A.L. Kennedy!

One of Lottie Davies' visuals for Dreams Of Your Life

A.L. Kennedy

Award-winning writer A.L. Kennedy has crafted the absorbing and sometimes unnerving narrative, which prompts responses to questions on society, friendship, love and loneliness.  This is played against the backdrop of beautiful and haunting time-lapse imagery, created by photographer Lottie Davies. The experience takes around half an hour to complete, and leads to new consideration of your life, relationships and position within them. We were privileged to be given an exclusive preview and this BEV blogger found it a deeply contemplative and profound undertaking, a mini therapy session, an emotional head massage and an aesthetically beautiful oasis of reflection in the middle of a busy day.

Find it here , and do pass around your friends and networks, for surely this is the kind of online interactivity that really can positively impact ourselves and our personal universes.

BEV spoke to Margaret Robertson, Hide and Seek’s Development Director, currently based in New York:

Margaret, Dreams Of Your Life is a unique and surprising project – can you tell us more about its conception?

We got involved while the film was still in production. We met Carol Morley and Cairo Cannon (producer) to discuss their intentions for the film, and then realised that Hide and Seek’s response needed to be separate from the film; a project that could work in tandem with the film while also existing outside, before and after the entity of the film. It would have made no sense for us to try to tell Joyce’s story as Carol and Cairo were already doing magnificent work with that.

Are you calling Dreams Of Your Life a game? It’s certainly interactive, but is more of an immersive experience than a game. It feels like a totally new concept.

Games by definition are goal-orientated with obstacles and difficulties standing in the way of completing the task. A mission/quest structure felt inappropriate for this story so we specifically aren’t calling this a game. We’re still trying to find the right term though – an interactive response to the film, a digital project? Joyce Vincent hadn’t been the subject of a quest, and that was the terribly sad thing about her death. We felt a great responsibility not to try and tell audiences how to live their life.

How did brilliant novelist A.L. Kennedy get involved?

A.L. Kennedy is a perfect fit for this project and was a delight to work with. She has written fiercely, bravely, lucidly and humorously about death, without ever being maudlin or sanctimonious. Her recent The Blue Book had some interesting corollaries with this project in how it engages directly with the reader and connects both personally and widely. She’s worked in women’s refuges, which made sense within Joyce’s story, and also does stand-up comedy. What a woman! BEV: I find that Kennedy’s work often has whispers or more of the disturbing and unnerving while being effused with warmth and empathy at the same time, which was certainly true of her writing for this project, and is ideal for the emotional complexities of your online piece.

And how about artist/photographer Lottie Davies, who contributes the gorgeous yet darkly telling time-lapse visuals of the piece?

We wanted a visual identity that would work next to documentary and Lottie’s idea of showing the passing of time outside the window was wonderful. The three days we spent with her creating a world outside a very normal flat were among the most extraordinary times of my life, spent with stunt cats, stunt dandelions and dead birds.

What are your intentions with this project? How would you like audiences to respond?

I want this to give people an opportunity to think. It’s a modern catechism; a way of asking yourself the same series of questions repeatedly at different stages of life. It’s been a year since we completed this and I know the questions by heart, yet still when I’m looking at the work a part of the narrative can catch me off-guard and provoke a powerful response in me, because already my life is different to what it was when we started this, of course. This is a chance to do an audit of your life and relationships, within half an hour on a busy work day.

Thank you Margaret!

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The launch of www.dreamsofyourlife.com is supported by a mobile touring installation, allowing audiences to interact with the experience on iPads at selected venues in the cities where the film is playing.

www.dreamsofyourlife.com, commissioned by Hilary Perkins, Channel 4’s Multiplatform Commissioning Editor for Drama and Film, launches on 1^st December 2011.  Dreams of a Life is released in selected cinemas on 16^th December.

Lottie Davies' winter image for Dreams Of Your Life

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