Sophie

I have had a dream

As told by Sophie, written down by mum

“I dreamed last night that I was on a holiday with our family in a very spooky haunted house… Accidentally I pressed a button because you (mum) said: ‘What is this button for?’ And then we all just got shrunk and we went outside and I saw a book and I swam toward it because the book was in a ditch and then I sat on it. We were sucked into the book and we had to defeat many witches to get to a portal to go to the next page. At the end of the book we were sucked out… We jumped into a portal by accident and then we grew back to normal height and we saw another portal and dad thought, where does that one go to and so then we went back home.”

Sophie is our youngest participant and she lives on a farm with her mum and 9 cats. When you’re 8 years old it is rather difficult to speak about your epilepsy. She knows she tends to stare. And that medication makes her very drowsy. And that she’s afraid. She’s afraid of hackers, who overtake you, and she’s afraid of growing as large as the planet, or as small as a letter in a book.

It is interesting for artists to find a form that appeals to young children as well as reaching a large audience. That is hard to find, as young children have a limited language to express the direct experience and tend to hint via images/dreams/films/games about what it feels like.

Sophie likes to play Movie Star Planet (MSP) a lot and this led to a fear of hackers. Hackers are actually quite a good metaphor for absences. Or a fit. It is kind of a cyber-attack. Something that takes control over you. Sophie has many Playmobil figures and one of them has absences too. She builds whole worlds with her Playmobil.

Sophie’s story is about a dream she actually had. She has sent it to Maartje, first in emoticons and later on in words, written down by her mum.

In the end, the artwork of Sophie’s dream remained a text and she added the drawings and emoticons.

Click the button below to see Sophie’s VR space!