Client
Location: Várpalota, Hungary
Completion date: 2023
Project Team
Executive Producer, Direction, Concept Development
Mattia Carretti
fuse*
Executive Producer, Hardware Engeneering
Luca Camellini
fuse*
Head of Visual Design, Software Artist, Screenplay
Matteo William Salsi
fuse*
Screenplay, Communication and Documentation
Giulia Caselli
fuse*
Sound Designer
Riccardo Bazzoni
fuse*
Software Artist
Samuel Pietri
fuse*
Hardware Engeneering, Software Artist
Matteo Amerena
fuse*
Exhibition Design
Alessandro Mintrone
fuse*
Production Manager
Martina Reggiani
fuse*
Production Manager, Communication and Documentation
Filippo Aldovini
fuse*
Communication and Documentation
Virginia Bianchi
fuse*
Overview
Onirica () is an audiovisual work that explores the dimension of dreams, interpreting through synthetic languages the creative ability of the human mind during sleep. Through the use of algorithms capable of translating textual content into images, Onirica () brings tales of night visions back into the domain of the visible, proposing novel reflections on the relationship between human and machine, tool and creator.
The work transforms into a collective experience the dreams of volunteers who participated in research sessions at the University of Bologna and the University of California Santa Cruz. Selected from a base of 28,748 dreams, the plots flow one into the other as a series of short films, tracing the actual cadence of NREM and REM dreams present throughout a night’s sleep.
Inserting itself within an increasingly relevant ethical debate, Onirica () aims to address the relationship between a purely human sensibility and the creative capacity of artificial intelligence systems: to discover their potentialities and limitations, to stimulate critical and conscious thought about the possible impact of these technologies on society.
Goals
Onirica () came to life thanks to an accidental connection with researchers from the Laboratory of Psychophysiology of Dream and Sleep "M. Bosinelli" at the Department of Psychology "R. Canestrari" of the University of Bologna. The department collected 807 dreams between 1970 and 2005 during specific nocturnal research sessions. Fascination with this story led to an exploration of dream banks, which revealed an even larger project: the Dream Bank, created by Professors G. W. Domhoff and A. Schneider of the University of California, Santa Cruz.
Onirica () aims to share these two captivating research projects with the public, transforming scientific findings into evocative, emotional narratives. In addition, through the semantic mapping of 28,748 dreams, thematic connections and recurring elements were highlighted, revealing the invisible links between geographically and temporally distant dreams and dreamers.
Additional Information
Onirica () was born from a total of 28,748 dreams described upon waking by dreamers. In particular, 30 dreams, peculiar in terms of richness of visual elements, bizarreness, level of involvement in the narrative, presence of engaging and imaginative themes, were chosen from the 807 accounts of the University of Bologna. The compositional structure of Onirica () echoes the actual alternation of NREM and REM dreams present in a typical night's sleep, distributing the selected thirty dreams into five cycles of six dreams each, forming the narrative basis of the entire installation. The transition between contiguous cycles is represented by bridges, which introduce a semantic journey across the whole 28,748 dreams database. Onirica () is developed through a dynamic succession of visualisations very similar to that of our mind, referring back to the stream of consciousness that is generated simultaneously with its narrative. Underlying its visual development is a text-to-image diffusion model: a generative model that exploits neural networks to learn how to synthesise images from textual descriptions. This was part of a custom pipeline, weaving three levels to incorporate additional elements that enhance and define the visual aesthetic of the work, giving it a distinct identity.