New chapter in a book: 'Emerging Forms of Collaboration: Communities of Practice Online through Networked Fictions, Dreams and Stories'

 Ask if you would like to read it!

 

Antonopoulou, A. and Dare, E. (2015) 'Emerging Forms of Collaboration: Communities of Practice Online through Networked Fictions, Dreams and Stories' in Kok, A., Lee. H, eds. Cultural, Behavioral, and Social Considerations, in Electronic Collaboration, Advances in Human and Social Aspects of Technology Series, IGI Global.

Dreaming in black and white

The belief that, in the early days of television, people dreamed in black and white but began to dream in colour with the advent of a colour TV service, has been verified by a number of research studies, for example Okada, Hitoshi; Matsuoka, Kazuo; Hatakeyama and Takao (2011). This phenomena evidences the significant connection between technology, culture and our individual imagings including dreams.

International Symposium for Electronic Arts Paper

Download our paper here!

A cross-disciplinary commentary on the inevitable nature of technological remediation

The Digital Dreamhacker: Crowdsourcing the dream imaginary' is a collaborative endeavour between Dr Eleanor Dare and Dr Alexandra Antonopoulou. It is a cross-disciplinary commentary on the inevitable nature of technological remediation even in the most unconscious aspect of human lives such as dreams.  The digital Dreamhacker application (Antonopoulou and Dare, 2011) is a Web based program written in Javascript that gathers dream themes reported by individual dreamers in the form of keywords, and turns them into crowdourced dream visualisations by sourcing online images. It is a “repurposing of dreams, a form of Crowdsourced  'hack', in which we take images from an online community and subvert them into dream visualisations and diverse social networks. The project is not about the literal illustration of dreams or a means of enhancing artistic skill, but more of a commentary on the 'social imaginary' and the connection between technology, culture and our individual ‘imaginings’, including dreams. Therefore, the visualisations re-frame dreams within a technical and cultural imaginary, meaning the systems of meaning that help form collective understandings and expectations of social life. 

Although the chance operations the computer uses resemble the illogical dream process, the computer cannot understand the context of the dreamer’s interpretation. This absence of conventional, logical reasoning, cultural and contextual awareness and non progressive thought processes, of the computer software makes it impossible to analyse dreams in the way that Freudian analysis proposes, in which meaning is hyper-associative, with myriad branches of symbolic meaning. In a paradoxical way, the computer resembles a human dreamer, as defined by Hobson: someone who uncritically accepts illogical events. 

Installation: App vs human dream visualisations

We have created an installation in which both analogue (physical sculptures) and prints of computer generated crowdscoursed representations of dreams are put side by side forming a dream network as an intellectual and physical space for cross-disciplinary discussion. The analogue sculptural dream interpretations have been created using used the same conceptual foundation; in a process of collaboration and interpretation dreamers exchange their short dream descriptions in turn they construct physical  dream representations interpretations for each other’s dreams.

The project is now on process of creating a Virtual Reality 3d space in which using gesture and movement people traverse the dream network.

   

Someone’s dream visualised by the Dreamhacker app and the same dream visualised by another human

Dream network call: Share your dreams with us!!!!

Visualising the Dream imaginary

The project is about different ways of representing and visualising dreams. Alexandra and Eleanor are hoping to generate a network of dream sculptures for their research. By participating and sending us your objects and information we ask you to consent for these to possibly exhibited or published.

What do I need to do?

1. Tell us in one sentence about a dream you have had: _______________________________________________________________________

2. Gives us 3 key words that sum up the dream:__________________________________

3. Where were you located when you had the dream? What was the date?____________________________________________________________________

4. Ask a friend to represent your dream in a box no bigger than a mobile phone (eg.it could be a matchbox, a mint tin, a cigarette box, or any other container.)

5. Ask your friend to fill in one of these forms as well.

6. Try to depict your friend's dream in a box no bigger than a mobile phone. You can use found objects, cut-out pictures etc., anything you think is suitable.

7. Give us a nick name (or your real name) here that you don't mind being used in research papers or exhibitions etc.____________________________________________

8. Write a paper (no bigger than your box) with the following info:

My dream in a sentence:

Key words that sum up the dream:

Place and date of dream:

Dreamt by:

Visualised by:

please use nickname if you prefer to remain anonymous

8. Sent us: Your boxes, the small paper slip (step number 8) and this text filled out and signed. Also feel free to send us your comments and your emails if you would like to be informed of our ventures and exhibitions.

looking forward to your submissions!

Sign here that you agree to Alexandra Antonopoulou and Eleanor Dare publishing and presenting the material and information given:

NAME:

DATE:

SIGNATURE:

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.