
The Dormio system, consisting of a hand-worn sleep tracker and an associated app is used to communicate with users and record dream reports via bluetooth to a laptop or cellphone. The user interaction with the Dormio system occurs across multiple stages of consciousness including wake, sleep onset, sleep, and hypnopompic wake.
Dormio takes advantage of the window of altered hypnopompic brain function by suggesting a dream theme during each of a series of hypnopompic awakenings, creating a serial dream incubation paradigm. This dream-report system is an adaptive, automated version of the serial awakenings paradigm described earlier that has been used to collect hypnagogic dream reports with repeated awakenings during sleep onset, using either polysomnography (PSG) or the Nightcap
In its most autonomous mode, the user decides what they want to dream about. This can range from a creative problem they are working on to an experience they want to reflect on or an emotional issue they want a new perspective on. The user launches the Dormio app and records a personalized dream prompt message (R1) using their voice, such as 'Remember to think of a tree'. The dream prompt is then played as the user prepares for sleep onset. After falling asleep—an event detected by Dormio— and being allowed to sleep for a predetermined time, Dormio wakes the user and plays the recording to guide their thoughts during subsequent hypnagogia. After receiving the prompt, the user returns to sleep and then, again after a predetermined period of sleep, is awakened and prompted for a dream report message. Their response is recorded, the dream prompt repeated, and they return to sleep.
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As a dreamer descends into sleep, Cocoon tracks three sleep-stages using brain activity, muscle tension, heart rate, and movement data that are revealed through its dome. External stimuli in the form of scent, audio, and muscle stimulation direct the content of the dreams. Crossing boundaries both disciplinary and experiential, Cocoon offers an embodied investigation of one's own consciousness, a philosophy in the flesh; with it users can observe and engage the torsion of their senses, see and shape dreams which are otherwise entirely uncontrollable, unlinked, and unseen.
We hope this speculative vision, and the conversations it inspires, help us reflect on how we develop our existing dream engineering technologies going forward, and how we combine them.
Cocoon has been shown at Ars Electronica 2018, the Beijing Media Arts Biennale 2018, and the Han Shan Art Museum.
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