The Dreamworld: Lost and Found

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Description of Research Project

For the past decade or so, my dreams have taken place in a very specific world. In this world I live in an apartment in a midsized city, which has its own specific and clearly delineated geography and landmarks that remain constant throughout my dreams. I am working on a project that "maps" the world in which my dreams happen. I am doing this by text, but also in conjunction with a video game designer who is creating full 3D renderings of the city my dreamself lives in (which includes the transit system and downtown and suburbs and a nearby beach resort and the surrounding farmland, etc.) These renderings will exist as virtual spaces that people can explore, and also illustrate and inform a novel set in this dreamworld—one that begins with GAME OVER scrolling across the screen and requires readers to then proceed through the text knowing that all is already lost. This novel will be formatted as the transcript of a Twitch streamer playing and narrating their gameplay, complete with "scrolling" comments from viewers down the right-hand margin of the page. I am interested in how the physical spaces of narrative fiction are, like recounted dreams and video games, both communal and private, and how the language of video games might be transmuted into a novelistic form. The project also engages with the suspended disbelief inherent to engaging with all fiction, as well as the cognitive dissonance of living in the end times—and yet, per Samuel Beckett, still going on.

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Undergraduate Student Responsibilities

I would like to hire a student to research video game streaming services, compile transcripts of online streamers of immersive games, and document live commentary from viewers. I need to create a narrative voice that operates in the same register and mode as Twitch personalities, while also developing a lexicon that is unique to my project and the world of my dreams. The student will also compile an annotated bibliography of dream literature (beyond Freud and Jung) to help me think through the essential ideas of my project and be of general assistance around game culture and fandom.

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Qualifications Required

A student with strong research and writing skills, fluency with video games and video game streaming services, preferably in their third year or higher. A Creative Writing or Fine Arts student would be ideal—or at least someone who understands the nature of how creative research informs arts-based projects.