About Oneiroglossa:
Oneiroglossia is a project that explores conversations in the oldest
language known to humanity: dreams. This project reverse-engineers
dreams. While dreams are popularly used for interpretation and finding
its meaning, I used meaning (words) to generate a dream
instead. Through this process, I aim to uncover how the subconscious
communicates with us through metaphors, symbols, and poetry.
For example, consider a dream where one is being chased by an animal.
Traditionally, this might be seen as "running away" from one's natural
instincts. Viewed in reverse, if the subconscious wanted to convey that
message, it would present a dream of being chased by an animal.
Thus, this project reveals the dream creation process of the
subconscious.
In a world where subconscious communication between people is possible, we can
envision conversations conducted through such dreams. This project draws
parallels to such a world.
Phase 1
At its core, the process of the first phase of this project is elegantly
simple. It is a chatbot interface between two people, allowing them to
communicate solely through images. Powered by an OpenAI DALL-E backend, the
prompts used to generate these images are carefully modified such that the
resulting images are rich in symbols, metaphors, and poetry, drawing
inspiration from Jungian and other dream philosophies. This leads to an
image-only conversation between two people in the language of dreams.
Here is one of the chats:
Screen-recording:
Screen-shots
Generated dreams:
Phase 2
The second phase involved fine-tuning a large language model (LLM) using many
of my own dreams and some of my personal background, then asking it to
generate a new dream for me. This exploration also included discovering my
unique, personal interpretation of the new dream.
The generated dreams were displayed in a fully immersive VR environment,
creating the sensation of being inside a dream. Consequently, this project not
only investigates how dreams are generated but also creates a sort of
"Dreaming Hub" where one can generate new dreams catered to a particular
individual.
An example of the dream generated in oneiroglossa phase-2 is as follows:
"A dense forest with trees shimmering in neon blue and green hues. The air
hums with a soft, electronic pulse. In a clearing stands a towering, ancient
structure that is a fusion of organic and technological elements. Climbing the
intricate lattice of the structure, each step resonates with the rhythm of a
distant drum. At the summit, there is a large, reflective surface projecting a
beam of light into the sky. Inside the beam, interconnected symbols and
images—memories, ideas, and visions—merge into a cohesive pattern. The scene
shifts to a tranquil space surrounded by bells, each tolling in harmony,
creating a feeling of unity and interconnectedness"
The corresponding generated VR dream (using Blockade Labs and Meta Quest) is
below:
My personal interpretation for the same:
I am in nature, in a dense chaos of figuring out how to connect art and tech
with consciousness. The beam represents the enlightening goal. To reach there
a path of symbology, dreams and visions pave the way. The bells tolling talks
about the connections and the harmony I have with others in the path.
#growTogether.
Phase 3
In the next phase, I made a prototype of how dreams could help resolve trauma,
thereby heal the life of a person. In this hypothetical scenario, a list of 5
childhood traumas of "Yoannia Ghar" is listed. By watching the dreams
corresponding to each trauma (hovering over the trauma card), the trauma could
potentially be resolved. I use the same dream language prompts here. As an
when a trauma is resolved, the final-biography of Yoannia changes as shown by
the text at the bottom. This tries to show how life could be better through
trauma resolution.
P.S: Although I use the word "trauma" here, this could apply to any aspect of
the shadow self. It doesn't necessarily have to be a high impact event from
the past, but could also be smaller vices like sugar addiction etc. In some of
my previous works, I use the word "knots" instead of "trauma".
Phase 4
In the next phase I explored how shared dreams images could be combined to
form a single image which could represent a collective consciousness.
A generative sculpture called "Oneiros" was created as a result:
Oneiros is a shared-dream 3D sculpture that evolves in real time from the
dreams of three individuals. Each individual's dreams are attached to the
sculpture in real time as it evolves. The combination of all three dreams is
transformed into a single image, which is displayed on the VR headset of the
base model. The sculpture thus showcases a collective consciousness formed by
the merging of subconscious images from three different individuals.
Phase 5
Phase 5 of Oneiroglossa explores the spectrum of states of consciousness in
project "O". More details on this phase can be
found here.
Phase 6
Phase 6 of
Oneiroglossa
is Numasync, a large-scale installation and research system on vision/dream
sharing.
Read more here.
