Fiction of our dreams for collective imaginariums.
I am an imaginative observer and a storyteller, working with concept development, social design and design research. I am originally from México, specifically from a huge city called Monterrey, situated in the middle of the mountains, as well as in the middle of industry. There, I graduated from my bachelors in Industrial Design with the project "Design strategies aimed at improving urban habitability", which I presented at the International Congress of Research, by the University of Colombia in 2019. Along my studies, I worked as an intern at the FABLAB of the Autonomous University of Nuevo León, as a design researcher and service designer. After graduation I worked as an assistant writer with filmmaker Cris Gris, as well as a production coordinator and personal assistant of the director in the making of short film "Alma y Paz." (Jury Award FICM 2021, Berlinale Official Selection 2022). I have been living in Tallin, Estonia, for the last 2 years, where I finished my MA. in Interaction Design at the Estonian Academy of Arts. I have worked as a freelance designer, researcher, concept developer, guest lecturer, workshop facilitator and illustrator, as well as in performative arts, acting and singing. I have collaborated with the VAT Teater (Estonia) and Teatre Ludowy (Poland), with De/Mo multimedia & AreWeEurope magazine (Netherlands). I am currently a volunteer translator for TedConferences. I have been invited on two consecutive years by Taltech, University of Technology of Tallinn, as a guest lecturer and workshop facilitator on the topic of Narratives of Design: Storytelling in innovation", as well as by the Estonian Academy of Arts, to impart the course "Worldbuilding" at the faculty of design. I am driven by discovering, making and working with stories, as truly belive in their power for starting conversations that can lead to real individual and collective change. This is precisely what has taken me through such a diverse path in design. Nice to meet you!
We have been told that we must have our actions, our thoughts, our beliefs and our hopes based on the facts of the world. With this project I suggest looking in the other direction, to analyse the fictions we are building in our individual sleep lives to collectively dream in our awake lives.
From a design perspective, fiction has a crucial role in the development of ideas. Allowing fiction to take the lead at reflecting possibility, options, and opportunities propels creativity and recognition of potential scenarios.
I created an immersive experience with an installation to “visit” the sensations of other people’s dreams to create imaginariums collectively with the “authors” of the dreams shared.
Starting with “What are we dreaming about?”, this project was developed exploring the fictions based on the realities we live, aiming to initiate conversations of “shared individuality”, as an exchange of intimacy and reflection on each other’s perception of our lives, as expressed in our dreams.
To represent this, and according to the insights from a diverse group of participants, I created a series of postcards that illustrate 3 initial ideas:
Dreams are… hopes that we yearn for.
Dreams are… secrets that protect truths.
Dreams are… playing with lies.
These postcards were given to 21 volunteer participants to document and share their sleep dreams.
The results stood out the value of sharing experiences from our sleep, in our awakeness. Not only conversations were triggered by the sub-reality of the stories, but also other imaginative stories based on the original ones.
The final installation includes a family of kaleidoscopes as imaginative tools to draw with light while listening to real dream stories simulated in a foreign language for unbiased deliberation. These stories are also presented in the written format they were originally documented in.
This is a multi-sensorial installation, with and for participatory design.