Dream Garden

Matt Roberts and Terri Witek / USA

Dream Garden is a site-specific augmented reality project to gather, graft and nurture a city's dreams. Each time a city dweller texts a 7-word dream (a poetic form moving private experience into public space), that dream automatically joins others both in a “garden” (a designated physical location in the city) and online at inthedreamgarden.com.

The project shows how some community resources–like citizens' dreams—can inhabit and expand a space without wounding it, colonizing it or wasting natural resources. As a political space, it's urban renewal and greening without displacement. As a philosophical space it suggests that dreaming together may change a city and even a country. As a community garden it suggests that our dreams aren't wasted—they are growable, transplantable, and in the poetic space of the project, both virtual and real.