Kent artist uses AI to find out if local residents share the same dreams (try it here)
Artist Adam Chodzko new interactive concept transforms dreams into visual animations
Whitstable artist Adam Chodzko has unveiled a new interactive concept that uses AI to transform descriptions of people’s sleeping dreams into visual animations.
Currently compiling the dreams of people living on the Isle of Sheppey in Kent, The Dreamshare Seer, tool maps these shared dream visions through its Dream Cloud.
Shared dreams automatically gather around themes or motifs they have in common, whilst indicating where the dreams emerge from on the Island.
The Dreamshare Seer offers a new surreal way of connecting with one another and to the landscapes we inhabit, informed by indigenous knowledge of dreamwork; The project is guided by experts connected to Malaysia’s indigenous Orang Asli population.
Although the first Dream Cloud is being formed by dreams from the Isle of Sheppey’s residents, the Dreamshare Seer tool can be trialled by anyone, anywhere in the world, to visualise their dreams.
Devised by Chodzko alongside The Dreamshare Seer group, the unique free tool at the centre of the project uses generative Artificial Intelligence to visualise and animate the imagination of an entire community.
Over 120 dreams from Sheppey have been shared so far and the project is constantly evolving; dream collection outreach to local community groups, and schools will take place throughout 2024. The dreams are initially recorded via simple storytelling processes, using home computers or smartphones before being translated into animations using ‘text-to-image diffusion models’.
The Dreamshare Seer is a free, publicly accessible, participatory and interactive artwork, designed to echo the structure and strange logic of a dream. It is a dream archive, a group artwork, an exhibition, a form of carnival, a pioneering community citizen science experiment, and a gathering of storytellers.
In the Dream Cloud the visualised dreams are shown suspended like kites flying above the island’s landscape with strings connecting them to the approximate location where their dreamer slept.
The Dream Cloud reveals commonalities between dreams – clustering them around repeated characters, objects, moods or events – creating a dynamic network of unconscious connections between individuals and communities on Sheppey.
In this way, we can discover if, for instance, a green fox is making its appearance in multiple dreams from multiple people living in the same area, wandering from dream to dream! The project is trying to discover the connections between place and the act of dreaming.
