Modem’s Dream Recorder visualises your dreams as nonsensical yet hypnotic reels, using gen AI

Why are we so obsessed with dreams? Some may just think they’re movies that happen in your sleep – meaningless subconscious images – others have studied dreams for their entire lives. From Carl Jung’s dream analysis, attempting to figure out one’s psychological state, to films such as Vanilla Sky and Paprika, which explore not just the visual fabric of dreams but also how dreams connect us all to each other – and the world. The trickiest part about recalling dreams is that it’s commonly agreed upon that one can never explain the dream exactly how it happened. In addition to this, do movies, paintings, illustrations actually capture the way dreams really look? Has anyone ever had a dream that looks as constructed and logical as the Hollywood stylised “dream imagery” seen in Inception?

Although the use of AI generative imagery is controversial these days, a conceptual project called Dream Recorder by design agency Modem Works may be using it in the only way it should be used: creating odd, nonsensical imagery that’s accurate to the images in one’s lawless unconscious imagination.

The idea is that users speak their dream aloud to the device as soon as they wake up, and the interface will visualise your dreamscape in the aesthetic of their choice, in ultra-low definition, using generative AI visuals created together with artist Alexis Jamet.

“The interest was always there; it’s just that, until recently, we didn’t have the tools to approach it visually in a meaningful way,” Modem tells It’s Nice That. “Generative AI is inherently suited to recreating dream imagery because it hallucinates by design. These AI models don’t see the world, they predict it.”

Everything considered goofy and broken about AI images fits right in with Dream Recorder, because dreams are kind of goofy and broken too. As we know, dreams are difficult to explain, but you would probably know one when you see it – illogical physics, environments that blend indiscriminately into each other, bizarre anti-narratives. “AI generates images by filling in blanks, stitching together fragments of learned data into something coherent but often strange. That process mirrors how our minds construct dreams: nonlinear, symbolic, filled with distortions and substitutions,” says Modem.

The actual look of the Dream Recorder is a mix between something clunkily analogue and utopian in its ergonomics, quite like a piece of otherworldly technology from a David Cronenberg movie (particularly the smooth, cartilage-inspired design of the UmbiCords in his 1999 movie eXistenZ). “We wanted to avoid the cold, clinical aesthetic that usually defines tech objects,” says Modem. Inspired by the discourse around “ambient computing” (environments where technology is seamlessly integrated into our surroundings, becoming an invisible part of our lives, such as an Alexa or GPS), the design of the Dream Recorder is chameleonic, an inoffensive part of the furniture – in other words, it exists in the background just like our unconscious thinking. “3D printing gave us the freedom to experiment with these nuances in shape and texture, allowing us to move away from rigid symmetry and toward something more tactile, more grown than manufactured,” says Modem.

Modem describes the bedroom as a “phone-free sanctuary” and its Dream Recorder is an extension of that sacredness. Aiming to protect the mental and physical boundary between rest and distraction, the device has an comfortable presence – a gentle glow in the dark. When training the generative AI’s visual identity, Modem collaborated with artist Alexis Jamet, whose distinctive style features blurry gradients, lo-fi textures, and atmospheres that feel like memories. “We weren’t interested in hyperrealism or slick digital sheen. We wanted something that felt tactile, fallible, almost emotional,” says Modem. “To achieve that, we developed a lightweight on-device post-processing method that deliberately degrades the AI-generated output – after all, we don’t dream in HD.” Maybe the next time you wake up in a cold sweat or with a smile on your face, you won’t need to attempt to explain what you just experienced to your loved one or coworkers – the Dream Recorder will be waiting to make your dreams come true.