- CollegeCentral Saint Martins
- CourseMA Industrial Design
- Graduation year2025
Dreaming is a mental activity which every human being experiences. Dreams are mysterious, sometimes chaotic, but fascinating because they are difficult to control. Our memories, experiences and mental states all influence our dream contents. At the same time, dream content can also influence us during the day, as dreams can bring inspiration and insight to real life. However, with the development of attention economy with recommendation algorithms, can we still dream of something that we want to without the influence of the recommended media content? With the use of generative AI for higher productivity, can we still be creative in diverse ways when we have similar generated answers? In this project, the designer uses scent as sensory stimulation to direct dreams with certain themes. Through one self-experimentation and two design projects, the whole project aims to initiate conversations about the attention economy in social media contexts, human creativity and productivity, and the development of generative AI. From reality to speculation.
Final work
Self-Experimentation Dream Device for Directed Dreams
This device is used for self-experimentation in dreaming of snowboarding. A scent is paired with snowboarding video content during the pre-sleep priming stage. During sleep, the scent is sprayed again during the rapid eye movement (REM) stage to trigger snowboarding content as a theme in dreams. The experiment is goes beyond its technical aspect, the designer's subjective feeling is also recorded and evaluated.
Dream Diary for Dream Content and Feelings
During the self-experimentation, the dream diary is maintained every morning after using the dream device. The diary documents not only dream content, but also reflections on the entire experimental experience, serving as the foundation for the following design projects.
Dream Turbo: A Mobile Mini Dream Device for Smartphone
Dream Turbo is a mini dream device that allows user to dream of the content they liked from smartphone applications through scent, which shares a similar technical background with the dream device in the self-experimentation. Within the context of attention economy's expansion into user's dreams, contents for better dreams is delivered to the users' smartphones by recommendation algorithms. Users' reaction and feedback for their dream experience are re-evaluated by algorithm to understand user even better.
Dream Radio: A Terminal for Finding Creativity in Dreams
Dream Radio is a working terminal for professional dreamers to find creativity during their sleep. With the spread of generative AI, individual productivity has increased but diversity has decreased, because people are consuming similar generated answers and content. When this created material is fed back to generative AI for training, a homogenization loop is formed. Thus, there is a new profession - dreamers - who use the randomness and uncontrollability of dreams to break this loop. AI serves as a supervisor to monitor and evaluate the level of similarity between the dreamers' dreams and generative AI-related content, ensuring the originality of these dreams. The environment is strictly controlled for dreamers to prevent overexposure to generative AI-related content.
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What I Dream When Trying to Dream of Snowboarding？
Dreaming is a mental activity which every human being experiences. Dreams are mysterious, sometimes chaotic, but fascinating because they are difficult to control. Our memories, experiences and mental states all influence our dream contents. At the same time, dream content can...
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