The Wandering Mind: You start to wonder whether it's a dream

Light installation, listening experience

Date2020

Description

Rest at ease. This is not a park. It is a portal to all the parks in the world.

“The Wandering Mind” is an AI system for dream states. Sampling and recomposing tiny fragments of sound from thousands of global field recordings it finds online, the system generates a winding dream journey for sleeping audiences.

We convene a collective action of sleeping together. Through a daily sound bath at sundown, we travel through parks and urban public spaces across the world, paying tribute to human habitats of social distance and safe gathering, makeshift shelter and tenuous refuge, mass uprising and fresh air. We invite you to affirm public space and everyone who occupies it by drifting to sleep wherever you find yourself.

The work is part of the Onassis Collection and was presented at the "You and AI: Through the Algorithmic Lens" exhibition (Pedion tou Areos park in Athens, 2021) and Plásmata II: Ioannina (Ioannina, 2023).

Year created: 2020

Medium: Light installation, listening experience

On Display

Onassis Mandra / Plásmata 3: Τhe exhibition's artworks

Credits

Acknowledgements

The artists acknowledge the generous support of Ars Electronica Linz and the European ARTificial Intelligence Lab, which granted the artists a residency in 2019. "The Wandering Mind" was produced with engineering support from Nicholas Gillian and Nan Zhao / Nayo. Research and development on the AI platform is underway at DVIC, Paris, with the support of Pôle Leonard de Vinci.