The Dream Recorder by Maria Paula Villamil is an emotion-responsive system which investigates what it would mean to interact with objects, spaces, or systems capable of reading and responding to our emotions.
Sensors embedded in a glove monitor the heart and hand sweat glands of a sleeping person to record emotional arousals provoked by the brain during dreaming periods. The resulting records – hypnograms – are 3D drawings that the user may learn to interpret and use as introspection tools over time.
The system even features a nightmare-alert device programmed to detect and interrupt nightmares.
At this stage, the Dream Recorder can already capture reliable data from the body, and get meaningful information from it. But the hypnograms and the nightmare-alert device require to be improved. Maria Paula plans to develop other projects that implement similar systems in different contexts.
The Dream Recorder is part of the Parsons Thesis Show 2005. Check also Cool Hunting‘s reports.
Two years ago, James Tichenor and James Dai made The Dream Keeper, a system to create tangible objects that represent dreams.
Tangible dreams can be worn as accessories, collected for personal remembrance or be shared between friends and family to deepen relationships. Skin conductivity sensors deduce the emotional state of sleeper. A script in a 3D studio transform this information into six physical forms that the user chooses from in the morning. Objects can be 3-d printed and keep as a physical mnemonic device to keep the dream memories from slipping away.
Project originated in a class on tangible interfaces at Mit Media Lab.