Artist Statement

What is a dream? Some would say dreams are independent universes that exist parallel to our own. Others may relegate dreams to the result of random activations in the brain. I argue that dreams are simulations of reality that exploit predictive models and perceptual representations of the world. Dreams appear like reality because they are the result of learning that occurs during waking perception. While the notion of dreams as bizarre and implausible have gained cultural dominance, many dream reports describe quite ordinary and banal places, characters and events. This is not to say that dreams can not be bizarre, but rather than dreams’ apparent bizarreness is more the exception than the rule. As any predictive model must abstract and generalize across multiple experiences or events, the resulting dream simulations only approximate reality. Predictive models are highly valuable in tuning attention and allowing the clutter of day to day constancy to fade from our experience. We can even consider our normal waking perceptions as simulations in themselves. Our brains have an uncanny ability to create highly detailed and cohesive images from the minuscule high resolution probes provided by our eyes.Sensory information is contextualized, extended, exaggerated, and reduced in our perceptual systems.
Those waking dreams we call external perceptions resemble the external world because they are anchored in sensory information. When we mind wander or dream we generate simulations in spite or in absence of sensory information and this lack of anchoring causes errors to accumulate such that implausible experiences become possible. During the early empirical dream research of the 1950s, it was thought by some that dreams were predominantly black and white. A person’s exposure to black and white media indicates the likelihood they report their dreams as black and white. It seems that our cultural constructions, e.g. film and television, influence our dreams.

Watching and Dreaming (2001: A Space Odyssey) is a two channel generative artwork whose image making processes are informed by an Integrative Theory of perception, mental imagery, mind wandering and dreaming. Watching and Dreaming perceives the visual world as presented in Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey, a tale involving a homicidal artificial intelligence. The artwork’s processes of image-making are presented on one channel, while the original frames from the film ‘seen’ by the system are presented in the other channel. These processes of mental imagery occur in perceptual, mind wandering and dreaming modes. The system learns by segmenting, clustering and averaging colour regions in the film’s frames using computer vision methods and learns to predict the occurrence of those regions in a predictive model. As it ‘watches’ the film, the system learns while simultaneously generating a simulation that resembles the film. During slowly moving sequences, and periods of darkness, the system mind wanders and dreams, respectively. This leads to a continuous flow of imagery where past, present, bizarre and plausible images are juxtaposed. In effect, the system’s dreams are a synthesis of what it has learned from the film, considering its limited cognitive abilities.

• Benjamin David Robert Bogart (CA) is a non-binary adisciplinary artist working for over two decades with generative computational processes (including physical modelling, chaotic equations, feedback systems, evolutionary algorithms, computer vision and machine learning) and has been inspired by knowledge in the natural sciences (quantum physics and cognitive neuroscience) in the service of an epistemological inquiry. Ben has produced processes, artifacts, texts, images and performances that have been presented at galleries, art festivals and academic conferences in Canada, the United States of America, the United Arab Emirates, Australia, Turkey, Finland, Germany, Ireland, Brazil, Hong Kong, Norway and Spain. Notable exhibitions include solo shows at the Canadian Embassy at Transmediale in 2017 and the TechLab at the Surrey Art Gallery in 2018. They have been an artist in residence at the Banff Centre (Canada), the New Forms Festival (Canada) and at Videotage (Hong Kong). Their research and practice have been funded by the Social Science and Humanities Research Council of Canada, the British Columbia Arts Council and the Canada Council for the Arts. Ben is of Dutch and French ancestry and lives and works on the unceded traditional territories of the xʷməθkʷəy̍əm (Musqueam), Səl̓ílwətaʔ/Selilwitulh (Tsleil-Waututh), and Sk̠wx̠wú7mesh (Squamish) First Nations, also known as Vancouver. ekran.org/ben/wp