Dreaming with machines at the edge of reason and imagination.
Enter Dream ModeDeveloped by Shaka McGlotten & Hakan Topal, SUNY Purchase College
Machines dream, hallucinate, and sometimes have accidents. Machine Dreams moves beyond the merely technical or cybernetic, embracing Deleuze and Guattari’s idea of the desiring-machine—a site of flows and interruptions, connections and breakdowns.
Conceived as a series of interventions, Machine Dreams is a co-taught course that integrates art and technology through an interdisciplinary exploration of human–machine relations. Together, we imagine new machinic assemblages that question the limits of perception, agency, and creativity.
At the core of our inquiry is performativity: how machines perform intelligence and consciousness, and how humans, in turn, perform with and for machines. Through theory, practice, and experimentation, students will probe the embodied dimensions of technological engagement and create interventions that expose the constructed nature of human–machine interaction.
Our research extends beyond a historical overview of art and technology to engage with bleeding-edge paradigms in AI, automation, and digital materiality. Drawing from cultural theory, speculative design, and critical fabulation, Machine Dreams invites participants to envision and prototype potential futures. The project deliberately blurs boundaries between theory and practice—reflecting the way creative production, law, space, labor, and ecology intertwine within today’s vast computational infrastructures.
Project supported by TAPROOT Art & Tech Grant.