Prof Anil Seth
Dr David Schwartzman
Consciousness experts at the University of Sussex are working with award-winning artists and musicians to develop a unique immersive experience which may also help reveal new insights into how we perceive the world.
Sussex neuroscientists Professor Anil Seth, Dr David Schwartzman, Dr Reny Baykova, and Trevor Hewitt have helped create Dreamachine, a powerful new collective experience exploring the limitless potential of the human mind, which will also form part of the world's largest-ever citizen science research study into perceptual diversity.
Created by Collective Act, the project brings together Turner Prize-winning artists Assemble, Grammy and Mercury nominated composer Jon Hopkins, and a team of leading technologists, scientists and philosophers.
Dreamachine, which will launch in London in May 2022 followed by presentations in Belfast, Cardiff and Edinburgh, is commissioned and presented as part of the UK Government-funded festival UNBOXED: Creativity in the UK. The event will lead audiences through an immersive environment of light and sound, created by and unique to every participant.
The project will also feed into the Perception Census - one of the largest scientific research projects of its kind. The census will be available online to everyone and will explore how peoples' inner experiences differ from each other.
Anil Seth, Professor of Cognitive & Computational Neuroscience at the University of Sussex, said: "One aspect of the Dreamachine project that has been particularly rewarding for me is that the science and philosophy has been built into the project from the very beginning – it's a true collaboration across disciplines.
"And as an experience for participants it's going to be enormously impactful. We have become so used to being passive consumers of culture and of information, and the content we consume is becoming ever more tightly curated.
"Dreamachine is completely unique that each participant generates their own perceptual world - their own individual inner universe. People will experience, for themselves, the power and potential of their own minds and brain, and we researchers have an unprecedented opportunity to learn about people perceive the world differently, both through the Dreamachine itself and with the other elements of the project – a large scale citizen science experiment into perceptual diversity, and an exciting schools programme in which we will kindle the curiosity of new generations."
Dreamachine is one of 10 major creative projects commissioned as part of UNBOXED: Creativity in the UK – the UK's most ambitious showcase of creative collaboration across science, technology, engineering, arts and maths which includes free large-scale events, installations and globally accessible digital experiences, and an extensive learning programme reaching millions of schoolchildren.
The project 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. Designed to be the "first artwork to be experienced with your eyes closed", Gysin had a vision for his invention to replace the TV in every home in America. Instead of passive consumers of mass-produced media, viewers of the Dreamachine would create their own cinematic experiences.
The academic members of the Dreamachine team, which also includes Professor of Philosophy at the University of Glasgow Fiona Macpherson, UCL Neurologist Professor Ley Sander and a wider network of collaborators throughout the UK, will investigate the idea that flickering lights impose a 'beat' on the rhythms of brain, similar to the 'alpha' rhythm – a brain state normally associated with relaxation.
More broadly the project will explore perceptual diversity with researchers collecting feedback from Dreamachine audiences about what they experienced using traditional survey methods including questionnaires and open-ended questions, as well as bespoke interactive software that will allow people to visually recreate aspects of their experience.
The wider Perception Census will involve a suite of online surveys and simple, fun, engaging tasks that will explore different aspects of how people perceive the world.
Around 50,000 people will be able to experience Dreamachine across the UK while hundreds of thousands more will participate across the schools programme, online offer and Perception Census.
Free tickets will be available to book via www.dreamachine.world from late March 2022, when dates and venues across the UK will be announced.
Dreamachine is a collaboration between:
Jennifer Crook (Director of Collective Act)
Assemble (interdisciplinary collective, Turner Prize winners 2015)
Jon Hopkins (Grammy and Mercury nominated composer)
Christopher Shutt (Sound Designer, Winner of a Tony Award for War Horse)
Professor of Cognitive and Computational Neuroscience Anil Seth, Dr David Schwartzman, Dr. Reny Baykova, and Trevor Hewitt (University of Sussex)
Dev Joshi (Technical Director, technologist behind Rain Room, Random International)
Professor of Philosophy Fiona Macpherson (Director of The Centre for the Study of Perceptual Experience, University of Glasgow)
Holition (Award-winning Creative Technology Studio)
A New Direction (Award-winning not for profit Education agency)
