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.
This project uses Layar, a free augmented reality application for mobile devices.