The DRL is an art and research project of Benjamin Evans, with the goal of presenting the phenomenon of dreaming in new tangible forms by turning the technologies of empirical sleep science to playful aesthetic ends.

Arguably, the dream is the most perfect form of art that has ever existed. A dream creates, out of sheer imagination, a completely immersive world capable of moving us through the entire spectrum of human emotion in a way that makes our high-tech ‘virtual reality’ devices seem downright infantile. Paintings, novels, movies, operas – all our creative cultural endeavours can obviously provide lasting personal resonance, but none have the capacity to directly impact us the way dreams do. After all, we ourselves are the authors (or artists? or directors?) of our own dreams. Dreams are produced neither by powerful Hollywood entertainment corporations, nor by elite prize-winning artists. Instead, they are produced by everybody, every night, for free. Dreams reveal the overlooked creativity, playfulness, and inventiveness inherent in the biology of the human being itself, and the productions of the DRL aim to help serve as a reminder of this.

Image on right: Goya, The sleep of reason creates monsters.