Dream Painter

Dream Painter is an interactive robotic installation by the artist duo Varvara & Mar that turns the audience's dreams into a collective painting. The artwork consists of multiple parts: interaction station, painting robot, and creative coding that transforms a spoken word to art on the canvas.

We all dream. Some dreams we remember in the morning, some are just gone. Often, the ones we record we hardly understand until the end. Well-known psychoanalysis Sigmund Freud has dedicated a lot of effort in understanding the human unconscious through analysing dreams. Freud was convinced in the power of the dreamworld when understanding the human mind. In his famous book Interpretation of Dreams he states the following: “The interpretation of dreams is the royal road to a knowledge of the unconscious activities of the mind.” (Sigmund Freud, 1899)

The artwork poses several important questions, like: can machine understand our unconscious? What happens if algorithms will be able to make sense of our dreams, understand us better than we do? Is there a limit of trust when it comes to the relationship between humanity and technology?

Dream painter is a work by Varvara& Mar produced by Medialab Tabakalera and Tekniker that aims to address the issue of human-robot trust from a creative point of view.. This new creation is an installation in which visitors tell their dreams to a device and a robotic arm, after receiving the information provided by the users, they understand it and paint a mural based on their interpretation of dreams. Tekniker, the main technological research center specialized in Advanced Manufacturing technologies in the Basque Country, showed interest in analyzing the emotional interaction between humans and robots to acquire new knowledge in its work on collaborative robotics, implement innovation processes and bring its work closer together. From there, the artists Mar & Varvara set out to work on an installation to work on these themes.

Credits:

Varvara& Mar ( Varvara Guljajeva and Mar Canet)

David Pello

Rocco Roncuzzi

Jaime de los Ríos

Tabakalera

Tekniker

Kuka