DREAMSCAPE (2025)
An Electronic Instillation for surround sound. (360 Degree Panning).
Composed and mixed by Gabrielle Dalsan.
Premiered at The Royal College of Music in February 2025.
Dreamscape illustrates a dream I had one night. After a recent exploration into dream work, I became more aware within my dreams, making note of the people, characters, emotions and storyline that frequently arose within my subconscious.
In traditional dreamwork, symbols and animals are of huge significance - often representing unconscious character traits that lie within a person. Dreams can help us to see elements of ourselves that we would otherwise be blind to in our day - to -day life.
The dream I documented journeyed through four stages: lions, children, horses and theatre. Lions are often a symbol of strength, horses of dignity, children of the ‘inner-child’ and with theatre being my ‘creative voice’. To see lions encouraged me to stop running away from my strengths and to embrace them fully. When we embrace our gifts and strengths, this often leads to a rediscovery of the inner child within us. Our ‘inner-child’ is the child version of us which is often respressed in adult life. Our inner child often struggles to exist in the working world. Therefore, many of us completely repress our childlike nature in the pursuit of becoming a ‘credible and respected adult’. However, stifling our childlike nature only leeds to suffering and a life with spontaneity and joy. When we stop creating, playing and expressing our interests, we instantly destroy our potential of becoming who we truly are.
In order to be a successful adult who is also truly themselves, in happiness and joy, we must trust that if we relax into our childlike nature as ‘adults’, we will still be respected and highly regarded by others - in fact, the more of our true selves we become, the happier and more successful we may be. So, when we begin to respect our inner child as a vital part of ourselves, we can share our creative interests with dignity (represented by the horse), as the inner child integrates itself as an adult in the world.
My intention for Dreamscape is to bring the audience into dreamwork. The more we can understand the deepest parts of our selves and the parts of us that remain in the unconscious, the better we can know ourselves in day - to - day life.”
The work is 30 minutes in length, produced in Logic Pro X, using vocal and narration recordings by yours truly. The work is designed to simulate a dream, pulling people into a vague trance, where they lose sense of time and space.
The performance was a beautiful and deeply special evening for me. My closest family and friends sat around each other, intuitively closing their eyes as the ambient soundscape began to unfold. Nobody uttered a word, and everybody listened deeply. Several people fell into a deep slumber themselves and some twitched and turned. We all sat together in the atmosphere, listening deeply and waking up on the other side.