Requiem For A Dream
A website that rots, falls apart, and finally kicks you out.In 2000, we built a website that was designed to destroy itself.
The film was Darren Aronofsky's Requiem for a Dream. We were a design team of two, on the other side of the world, commissioned on trust, before we had seen a single frame.
Beginnings.
We were huge fans of Pi, Darren's previous feature, and we completed the concept for the site in close collaboration with him without having seen the film. The original 35mm prints were eventually shipped to us in 2 large orange containers, and we rented MPC's cinema to screen them at 9 am.
We watched the film as we had never watched a film before, and we have yet to see it a second time. RequiemforaDream.com is by far the most emotional and difficult project I have done to date, and our biggest fear was that we wouldn't do the film justice. It set the tone for everything I have done since.
We watched the film as we had never watched a film before, and we have yet to see it a second time. RequiemforaDream.com is by far the most emotional and difficult project I have done to date, and our biggest fear was that we wouldn't do the film justice. It set the tone for everything I have done since.
The work.
The site was designed as an extension of the film, not a promotion for it. The visitor is a character in the story, gradually losing control as they journey through the site, finding their own way through the intersecting narratives of the four lead characters. There is no navigation bar.
As the film's main leitmotif is addiction and decay, the site itself became a metaphor for it. The further you progress, the more the site decays.
As the film moves from Summer through Fall to Winter, so does the site. Colour shifts from white to grey to black.
In the final phone conversation between Harry and Marion, the image is gradually destroyed, while the sound degrades from 16-bit to 1-bit.
The experience is deliberately disorientating and ultimately ends in rejection. You are kicked out.
It was the first time we worked with an interactive non-linear narrative. It became the central logic of everything that followed.
As the film's main leitmotif is addiction and decay, the site itself became a metaphor for it. The further you progress, the more the site decays.
As the film moves from Summer through Fall to Winter, so does the site. Colour shifts from white to grey to black.
In the final phone conversation between Harry and Marion, the image is gradually destroyed, while the sound degrades from 16-bit to 1-bit.
The experience is deliberately disorientating and ultimately ends in rejection. You are kicked out.
It was the first time we worked with an interactive non-linear narrative. It became the central logic of everything that followed.
What it was, named later.
At the time, we had no framework for what we were building. We understood that the story, the visitor's experience, the visual language, the sound, and the structure had to move as one system. That each element had to mean the same thing.
Decay as navigation. Season as colour. Addiction as interface.
This is what I now call Narrative Architecture. Story, voice, expression, and coherence operate as a single system.
We built it in 2000. I named the method twenty-six years later.
Decay as navigation. Season as colour. Addiction as interface.
This is what I now call Narrative Architecture. Story, voice, expression, and coherence operate as a single system.
We built it in 2000. I named the method twenty-six years later.
Requiem for a Dream website reel.
Requiem for a Dream website reel 2.
Behind the scenes.
Interview with Alexandra Jugović for Digital Archaeology 2010
Credits.
Created in 2000 at Hi-ReS!, Alexandra Jugović & Florian Schmitt, in collaboration with Darren Aronofsky.
In 2026, Rich Holman rebuilt the site from the original Flash files. It is not complete. Some of the seams show. But it is there again.
View the rebuilt site →
In 2026, Rich Holman rebuilt the site from the original Flash files. It is not complete. Some of the seams show. But it is there again.
View the rebuilt site →
— D&AD Pencil
— 2 Webby Awards
— ADC Europe Gold
— ADC Silver
— Flash Film Festival
— Exhibited at the Barbican, Digital Revolution, 2014.
— And again at Barbican, Communicate: British Independent Graphic Design since the Sixties, 2004-2005.
— Exhibited at 64 Bits, an exhibition of the web's lost past, 2017
— Referenced in numerous articles, books, and publications.
— 2 Webby Awards
— ADC Europe Gold
— ADC Silver
— Flash Film Festival
— Exhibited at the Barbican, Digital Revolution, 2014.
— And again at Barbican, Communicate: British Independent Graphic Design since the Sixties, 2004-2005.
— Exhibited at 64 Bits, an exhibition of the web's lost past, 2017
— Referenced in numerous articles, books, and publications.
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alexandra@yugenstud.io
Featured Work.
Amplifon →
From medical stigma to everyday belonging.
databloom →
Live data, shaped into experience.
Reach out directly.
alexandra@yugenstud.io