The Dreamachine Project wins two major awards
Published: 26 October 2023
The Dreamachine Project won the 2023 CogX award for Best Innovation in Creative Arts and also the Immersive Environment prize at the Lumen Prize.
The Dreamachine Project has won two major awards in the last month.
Professor Fiona Macpherson, University of Glasgow’s College of Arts and Humanities and Director of the Centre for the Study of Perceptual Experience, is the co-academic lead on the project.
The Dreamachine Project won the 2023 CogX award for Best Innovation in Creative Arts and also the Immersive Environment prize at the Lumen Prize. CogX Festival is the world’s biggest festival of AI and transformational tech. While the Lumen Prize celebrates the very best art created with technology through a global competition.
Dreamachine is a powerful immersive experience exploring the limitless potential of the human mind. Created by Collective Act, it brings together Turner Prize-winning artists Assemble, Grammy and Mercury nominated composer Jon Hopkins, and a team of leading technologists, scientists and philosophers including Professor Macpherson.
Using sound and flickering light experienced through closed eyes, Dreamachine takes people on a kaleidoscopic, visual journey created by their own minds. Audiences take their seats in a space designed by Turner Prize-winning artists Assemble, creating a shared multisensory experience that is both highly personal, and collective.
Grammy and Mercury nominated composer Jon Hopkins has composed a new score for the work in 360-degree spatial sound, creating a unique and enveloping sonic world.
A team of neuroscientists and philosophers from the University of Sussex and the University of Glasgow have collaborated with creative technology studio Holition to develop unique creative tools for audience reflection, all designed to encourage connection and conversation.
The experience is inspired by an extraordinary but little-known 1959 invention by artist– inventor Brion Gysin. His experimental homemade device used flickering light to create vivid illusions, kaleidoscopic patterns and explosions of colour in the mind of the viewer.
Dreamachine consists of:
- A live event, which received a 5* rating from the Guardian. It is currently running in London and plans to tour again in the UK and internationally are being made.
- The Perception Census, a large citizen science project which over 30,000 people have taken part in. The census closes on 31 October 2023 – so there is still time to take part.
- A schools programme.
First published: 26 October 2023
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