ReVerie
The ReVerie interactive AI Performance explores the scientific concept of dream reliving, and translates whispered dream recollections into real-time visualizations of dream objects using a 3D generative diffusion model, allowing participants to explore a shared “dreamscape”.
During the performance, visitors engage in a ritualistic act of whispering their dreams. Each dream transcription and corresponding visualization are temporarily collected in the memory of the AI system. ReVerie then retrieves from this memory to generate a collective, dynamic visual journey where participants navigate through interlinked dream objects within a virtual space.
Historically, dream interpretation has been wielded as a tool of power, such as in imperial China, where dreams were used to legitimize political ideologies, or in Mesopotamia and Egypt, where they were seen as messages from divine realms, shaping collective beliefs and societal behavior. This parallels our time, where state actors deploy mass social engineering to shape the collective subconscious, with synthesized content and targeted misinformation through generative AI and social media. This modern approach continues the age-old use of subconscious influence, now heightened by digital means that penetrate individual and societal realities.
Through this juxtaposition, ReVerie underscores how modern AI, with its generative and interpretive capacities, can either challenge or perpetuate subconscious control. By allowing participants to co-create in an open dreamscape, the artwork offers an alternate route—a reclaiming of agency, where individuals contribute to a living, evolving collective dream that resists singular interpretations.
Concept and System Implementation: Pinyao Liu;
Generative Music: Keon Ju Lee;
Scientific Research: Alexandra Kitson (Simon Fraser University), Claudia Picard-Deland, Michelle Carr (Dream and Nightmare Lab, University of Montreal)
Photo: Martin Hieslmair and Florian Voggeneder.
This work was realized with the support of The Ars Electronica Founding Lab program. The Founding Lab is realized as a Public Partnership between Ars Electronica Linz GmbH & Co KG and the Institute of Digital Sciences Austria and financed through funds from the Austrian Federal Ministry of Education, Science and Research.