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This Dream Recorder Records Your Dreams for Playback

AI-based, of course

By Rain Noe - June 18

in Tech

The 1991 Wim Wenders movie "Until the End of the World" had a fascinating premise, about a scientist inventing a device to allow his blind wife to see. The invention, connected to the scientist's head by electrodes, records the biochemical event of seeing. The device would then be physically connected to his wife, and it would transfer the visual data to her brain, bypassing her eyes, and allowing her to "see" whatever had been recorded.

However, the wife dies due to an illness, and it's subsequently discovered that if you leave the device attached when you go to sleep, it can be used to record your dreams. People then become addicted to watching their own dreams the next morning, with it being presented as more alluring than any drug.

Now a Dutch design studio and think tank called Modem claims to have developed a similar machine. Their Dream Recorder is a "magical bedside device" billed as "a portal to your subconscious."

The idea is that when you wake up, you describe your dream to the device, and a "dream weaving" AI model generates video of its interpretation of your dream. It's then played back on the device's screen for you.

Ultra-Low Definition DreamscapesDream Recorder translates your subconscious into ultra-low-definition, impressionistic dreamscapes. After you recount your dream in your preferred language, it's transformed into a short-form reel, rendered in a preselected visual style.

The Ultimate Dream JournalDream Recorder brings dream journaling into the intelligence era, preserving your dreams as visual records. Replay your dream and reflect on its symbolic meanings, tracing patterns that echo into waking life.

In the Wim Wenders movie, there's only one dream-recording prototype, and multiple parties and government agents are trying to get their hands on it. Modem has a very different idea. Their Dream Recorder isn't a secretive prototype they're guarding or a commercial product they're flogging. It was created in the name of research, and the design is available to all:

DIY by Design

Dream Recorder is built with a DIY spirit. The entire device is fully open source, including the code, hardware documentation, and the 3D-printable glow-in-the-dark shell. Download everything from GitHub, gather the off-the-shelf components, and assemble it yourself. No soldering required.

You can learn more here.

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Alan Nomoto

2 days ago

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Positively creepy, not to mention AI “learning” this crap as “ my preference” after some nightmare.

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Abe Froman

a day ago

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So now our dreams are reduced to prompts for generating simulations of themselves? Dreams offer a mysterious and deeply personal glimpse into the subconscious—but this novelty device replaces that mystery with a digital imitation, turning the experience into a self-referential loop. I'm not interested in what this tool does, and if I were, I could generate similar results using an AI prompt on the computer I already own. This kind of tech misses the point entirely and feels like a waste of money. I also share Alan Nomoto's concerns about it "learning"—which, let's be honest, is often just a euphemism for collecting and sharing our data.

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Marc Chapin

2 days ago

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AI image generators seem to have an inherent dream quality to them and the added soft screen image cover seems to amplify that. Having a dedicated device for dreams seems very narrow. Many people don't remember their dreams while others can lucid dream. Even when you do remember them, they fade quickly. The likelihood of getting anything close to what you actually dreamed seems small. This would probably be more useful for other types of image generation that AI is already being used for. Perhaps a reimagined device would make it more user friendly for those who aren't familiar with the technology and make it more accessible. Perhaps it would be a personal sketch artist like law enforcement uses to get visuals of suspects or you could feed it your memories that previously went unrecorded. AI keeps advancing and perhaps one day soon it will get to a point where it has a "killer app" that is useful in a way that has never been available before. Hopefully the up side is better than the down side.

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