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.
The original 35mm prints arrived in two large orange containers. We rented a cinema to watch it. At 9am. We have yet to see it a second time.
Our biggest fear was that we would not do the film justice. That fear set the tone for everything we have done since.
Our biggest fear was that we would not do the film justice. That fear set the tone for everything we 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. You find your own way through the intersecting narratives of the four lead characters, or you don't. There is no manual.
As the film moves from Summer through Fall to Winter, so does the site. Colour shifts from white to grey to black. The further you progress, the more the site decays. 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 ends in rejection. You are kicked out.
It was the first time we worked with interactive non-linear narrative. It became the central logic of everything that followed.
As the film moves from Summer through Fall to Winter, so does the site. Colour shifts from white to grey to black. The further you progress, the more the site decays. 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 ends in rejection. You are kicked out.
It was the first time we worked with 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 only 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.
Begin a conversation.
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From medical stigma to everyday belonging.
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Live data, shaped into experience.
Reach out directly.
alexandra@yugenstud.io
Featured Work.
Amplifon →
From medical stigma to everyday belonging.
databloom →
Live data, shaped into experience.
Reach out directly.
alexandra@yugenstud.io