Madeleine Pavelic & Anika Kew Brandstetter

Unconscious associations are borne out of dreaming. Surrealist artists such as Odilon Redon and Salvador Dali have drawn on dreams extensively for inspiration. While psychoanalytic theories inspired the surrealists, the digital age brings a new dimension to dreaming, which is to view it as a sort of virtual reality. It is no coincidence that many machine-learning-based image generators are described as “dreaming” because the process is so similar. Just as a machine-learning tool is primed with a database of images, we are primed with an endless barrage of images in our daily lives. The algorithm that finds significance in these images and creates something new out of them is not so different from our own unconscious mind which selects symbols to create meaning in the form of dreams.

Anika and Madeleine are 4th-year ID students interested in video games, art production, and what makes us tick.