A short version, in plain language. This page describes the dreamworld as it ran at Indigenomics IMPACT 2026 (HR MacMillan Space Centre, Vancouver, May 27–28, 2026).
For IMPACT 2026 the dreamworld opened as a fresh field at the HR MacMillan Space Centre. New IMPACT dreams appeared as glowing spheres in semantic space. Dreams that were close together were close in meaning, and their edges connected nearest semantic neighbours rather than just submission order.
The earlier Digital Ecologies dreams were still honored, but they were hidden by default. They returned only while the visitor performed anjali: palms together at the heart, fingertips up. During that held gesture, the past dreams faded in as translucent fish at their original positions. When the hands released, the past receded again.
This is why the IMPACT field had two visual registers:
The IMPACT dreamworld did not turn the new dreams into herring. That was the earlier Digital Ecologies register. Herring remains a core ecological story in the project, but it was not the graph gesture for that show.
A mudra is a held position of the body that closes a circuit of attention. You cannot do it by accident, and you cannot do it fast. The gesture asks for the same thing the installation asks for: stillness, presence, and the willingness to hold a shape long enough for something to happen.
A button rewards speed. A mudra rewards attention. The whole piece is about slowing down enough to perceive a sea, so the interface itself has to be slow.
Anjali: remembering the past
Palms together at the heart. Hold for a moment. The Digital Ecologies dreams faded in as translucent fish around the new spheres. This was the remembrance gesture: the past visited, but did not take over the fresh field.
Thumb and index pinch: gather clusters
The field gathered toward cluster representatives. It let visitors feel how individual offerings collect into shared themes.
Thumb and middle pinch: gather the whole field
The clusters gathered again into one dream-field. This was the all-my-relations register: many offerings briefly felt as one field.
Open palm sweep: time spiral
The field moved into a temporal spiral, showing how the dreams of the show unfolded over time.
Two-hand fingertip contact: field-wide ripple
Two hands meeting fingertip-to-fingertip sent a slow Coast Salish primitive ripple through the field. Circle, Crescent, and Trigon were used as functional motion language: not as static decoration, but as a way of showing relationship moving through semantic edges.
At Digital Ecologies (April 2026), Hakini could gather many dreams into the shape of a herring. That was right for that show: herring carried the ecological story of forage species, food web, and Kwaxala.
At IMPACT 2026, the dreamworld at the Space Centre began as a new field. The gesture language there was remembrance, clustering, time, and ripple propagation. Herring still matters to the Salish Sea Dreaming knowledge graph, but the IMPACT visitor dreams did not become herring.
When visitors ask what their hands did at IMPACT 2026, the system should answer simply:
The system should not overclaim cultural meaning. It can describe the visible interaction and name the approved visual primitives factually. It should not speak on behalf of Coast Salish people about what those forms mean.