Crowdsourced Dreamspaces: a collective of analogue and digitally generated dream visualisations

This installation will draw on the conceptual foundation of the 'Digital Dreamhacker' (Antonopoulou, Dare 2013), a computer application and method that creates crowdsourced dream visualisations. We are in the process of creating an installation presenting a network of analogue generated sculptural dream visualisations put side by side with their digitally generated versions. The analogue generated sculptures will be created in a process of collaboration and interpretation in which dreamers exchange their dream descriptions and in turn they construct physical dream representations for each other; while the digitally generated images will be produced using the Dreamhacker app. We will also provide visitors with the opportunity and tools to use the app and generate crowdsourced representations of their own dreams, while also offering them opportunities to create physical models of other people's dreams. The project would result in an impressive collaborative sculpture, a physical network of dream imaginaries.

The proposed work focuses on the social context of dreams, creating visualisations that are neither a depiction of individual imaginings or a means of enhancing artistic skill, but a reframing of dreams within the technical and cultural Imaginary, meaning that which forms our collective understandings and expectations of social life. Through this work we investigate not only how the illogic of dreams can be embedded into new computational paradigms that challenge orthodox creative practices but we also comment on the relationship between the human and the machinic mediation and collective (un)consciousness. It is a research strategy in which social media and mediation are innovative contexts for exploring technology and the imagination, supported by methods that emanate from both critical design and network analysis. This project goes beyond many critical and speculative design ideas by actually implementing a working system that forms an intellectual and physical space for cross-disciplinary discussion.