Dreamlike Dream: Wandering Between Dream and Reality

Life often feels like a book that is constantly being rewritten. News fragments, glowing phone screens, conversations overheard in passing—each moment reminds us that reality is not fixed. What we thought we understood yesterday may feel different today. The world, like wind and clouds in the sky, is always shifting.

The installation Knowless: Dreamlike Dream explores this experience of living within change. Inspired by the philosophy of Zhuangzi, the installation invites visitors to wander between dream and waking, between certainty and uncertainty, through a sequence of spatial environments.

Rather than presenting philosophy as text, the ideas unfold through light, mirrors, sound, and movement, allowing visitors to experience the concepts physically and emotionally.

Entering the Space: The Beginning of a Dream

As visitors enter the installation, they step into a dimly lit space where light and shadow move gently across the walls. Words appear and disappear like drifting thoughts, projected onto surfaces that seem both solid and uncertain.

This first moment is intentionally quiet. The space asks visitors to slow down.

The installation begins with a simple question drawn from Zhuangzi’s philosophy:

How do we know whether we are dreaming, or awake?

Zhuangzi famously described a dream in which he became a butterfly. Upon waking, he wondered whether he was Zhuangzi who had dreamed of being a butterfly, or a butterfly now dreaming that he was Zhuangzi.

This paradox is not meant to be solved. Instead, it encourages us to recognise that perception is unstable. What appears real in one moment may dissolve in another.

In the installation, the shifting projections and subtle reflections create a similar sense of uncertainty. Visitors begin to realise that the space does not behave like an ordinary environment. It responds to movement, changes with time, and reveals different details depending on where one stands.

The Play of Mirrors and Shadows

As visitors move deeper into the space, mirrors and reflective surfaces begin to appear.

These mirrors do not function in the ordinary way. They fragment reflections, multiply silhouettes, and blend the viewer’s body with projected imagery. At certain angles, visitors see themselves clearly; at other moments, their reflection dissolves into light and shadow.

This stage of the installation explores the softening of boundaries between self and environment.

In everyday life, we tend to think of ourselves as separate from the world around us. Yet the installation gently disrupts this assumption. Reflections overlap, shadows merge, and projected imagery moves across bodies and surfaces alike.

Visitors become aware that they are not simply observing the artwork—they are also part of it.

Light and Darkness as Breath

Throughout the installation, light slowly shifts in intensity.

Bright areas fade into darkness, and shadows gradually reveal hidden details. This constant change mirrors the rhythm of breathing: expansion and contraction, appearance and disappearance.

Rather than presenting light and darkness as opposites, the installation treats them as two phases of the same movement.

In Zhuangzi’s philosophy, binary distinctions—true and false, self and other, reality and illusion—are often seen as artificial divisions imposed by human thinking. When we step back from these rigid categories, we begin to perceive a more fluid world.

The changing light in the installation reflects this idea. Visitors experience how perception itself is shaped by context: what appears clear in one moment may become ambiguous in the next.

Drifting Without Division

As the installation approaches its final stage, the space becomes increasingly atmospheric.

Light, sound, and reflection begin to merge into a single environment. The boundaries between surfaces soften, and the space feels almost cloud-like.

Visitors find themselves surrounded by shifting visual elements that no longer demand clear interpretation. Instead of asking “What does this mean?”, the installation encourages a different mode of perception: simply being present within the experience.

In Zhuangzi’s philosophy, true freedom arises when we release our attachment to rigid distinctions and fixed identities. When we stop insisting that reality must conform to our expectations, we can move more freely within the world.

The final environment of Dreamlike Dream reflects this idea.

Truth and illusion no longer require separation. Identity becomes fluid. The mind, like a bird drifting through open sky, is free to wander.

A Philosophical Journey Through Space

Knowless: Dreamlike Dream is therefore not only an installation but also a journey.

Visitors pass through a sequence of environments that gradually shift their relationship to perception:

• from questioning reality

• to experiencing transformation

• to drifting freely within ambiguity.

Rather than explaining philosophical ideas directly, the installation allows these ideas to unfold through spatial experience.

In doing so, it invites visitors to reconsider how they understand the world—and how lightly we might hold our certainty about what is real.

Epilogue: The person you meet in the dream is you

Dreamlike Dream does not offer answers. It offers a journey.

Slow down, pause, loosen your grip,and you may discover—

The “true self” you have been searching for has been here all along.