In a world where algorithms shape our tastes and AI generates art in seconds, genuine creativity is becoming more and more of a novelty. Our innerspace, the dream world – is one of the dimensions that remains relatively untouched by modern developments – for now at least. However, in order to protect the privacy of our dreamspace, we need to understand its profound value. This is one of the central questions I have posed in my work as a philosopher, artist and historian of science over the past years during my research on dreams and how we view them.
For centuries, artists have turned to dreams as a source of inspiration, uncovering ideas that feel raw, non-linear, surreal, and ruled by our subconscious animalistic desires, fears and wishes – rather than constrained daytime logic. David Lynch has built entire films around dream logic. Billie Eilish’s visuals pull directly from her subconscious. Christopher Nolan’s Inception was shaped by his own dream experiences, while Grimes recorded Visions in a sleep-deprived, dreamlike state.
Credit: Maya Deren, still from The Very Eye of Night
Dreams as a Portal to the Weird, the Uncanny, the Untamed
Dreams don’t care about marketability: they spit out surreal, disturbing, poetic, and absurd imagery—things no algorithm could predict. That’s why artists have always turned to them.
Visionaries like Sun Ra, whose Afrofuturist cosmic jazz was rooted in his dream experiences, used dreams to channel something bigger than himself; a futuristic vision informed by ancient ancestral rootedness. In dreams, you’re not following cultural programming—you’re breaking it. And in a world obsessed with control, there’s something radical about letting the subconscious take the lead.
Dalí taught himself to fall asleep on a chair with a bunch of keys in his hands. Once asleep, his keys clattered onto a plate on the floor, waking him up and allowing him to immediately start painting his dream images; he described his paintings as ‘hand-painted dream photographs’.
The Science of Dream Creativity: Why the Best Ideas Happen in Sleep
It’s not just folklore—science backs it up. Studies show that during REM sleep the brain is more able to forge connections that would never happen in waking consciousness. During REM sleep, the prefrontal cortex (logic center) is less active, while the amygdala and association cortex (emotion and memory) are highly active, allowing for free flowing, unconventional thought patterns. The Default Mode Network is a set of brain regions active during rest and mind-wandering – it plays a key role in both dreaming and creativity, and facilitates spontaneous, unconscious idea generation.
This explains why some of the most unpredictable, innovative ideas have emerged from dreams. Even mathematicians have solved complex equations in dreams—because the dreaming brain is wired for lateral thinking. Einstein once dreamed that he raced down a steep mountainside so fast that at one point he approached the speed of light. At that moment he saw the stars change shape. When he woke up from this dream, he further elaborated this image using meditation and visualization. The sewing machine was conceived in a dream. As was the Google search engine.
Lucid dreaming, a state in which the dreamer is aware that they are dreaming, opens up this realm even further. For some experienced lucid dreamers, it allows them to explore landscapes, create music, sculpt impossible structures— offering an infinite, immersive creative studio or simulation space with little limits. Dream phenomenology is known to be more vivid, somewhat like a psychedelic state. I spoke to a Michelin chef once, who tests new flavour combinations in his lucid dreams. Consciousness is wild, vast, and multidimensional. Our normal operating waking-life-state, of doing groceries and brushing our teeth, is really just one mode. It’s worth trying to get out of, often.
Credit: Man Ray, The Lovers, 1936
Dream-Tech and the Battle for Imagination
Here’s where it gets really futuristic: dreams might be a beacon for raw, unfiltered creativity—but it seems they’re also becoming a new tech frontier.
AI-powered dream journals, lucid dream induction devices, even in-dream advertising—our subconscious is becoming a competitive new arena for data collection and commercial influencing. If creativity thrives in the uncharted spaces of the mind, what happens when those spaces are mapped, tracked, and influenced like everything else? Perhaps the most surprising example: in-dream advertising—where a brand aims to insert messages into your subconscious while you sleep. This seems like a futuristic potential, but marketing surveys have shown that many companies have committed a vast amount of budget to testing the potential.
The field of dream research is divided between those who welcome these modern technological developments, and those who are hesitant or even worried. What is for sure is this: we don’t know exactly what we are tampering with, since we don’t know the exact function of dreaming. These developments raise some big questions: If technology starts influencing our dreams, what does that mean for the freedom of our creativity? What happens when the imagination is mapped, tracked, and manipulated just like our waking lives? What happens when even sleep isn’t a refuge?
How to Start Engaging With Your Own Dreamworld
If dreaming is one of the purest sources of creative inspiration, then why not start actively working with it? Here are three ways to get started:
- Dream Journaling, but Make It a Ritual – Forget basic notes – language, after all, is not the main language of dreams. Why not turn your dream journal into an art project. Sketch dream imagery. Compose soundtracks to your dreams. Write down nonsense phrases from your subconscious. Layer fragments of dreams together like a cut-up poem.
- Reality Checks & Dream Triggers – Throughout the day, ask yourself: “Am I dreaming?” Try jumping—does gravity feel right? Look at a clock—does the time make sense? These small actions train your brain to remember to perform reality checks in dreams, a key approach used by avid lucid dreamers in becoming aware of their dream state.
- Sensory & Sound Experiments – Artists like Aphex Twin claim certain frequencies trigger dream experiences. Experiment with binaural beats or ambient noise as you sleep. Some dreamers even use scent—placing a particular fragrance near their bed and training their brain to recognize it inside dreams.
The Future of Dreams: Resistance Through Imagination
Dreaming isn’t just escapism. It’s a space of raw, unfiltered expression, where the imagination runs wild. In an era where creative spaces are being swallowed up by algorithms and corporate influence, engaging with our dreams might be one of the most rebellious and liberating things we can do.
My Advaya Dreams Course, launching today for World Sleep Day, is diving deep into the radical potential of dreams. From lucid dreaming techniques to dream-tech ethics, cross-cultural perspectives on dreams, Jungian psychoanalysis to experimental dreamwork, the course is about reclaiming our subconscious—and using it as a tool for artistic expression, healing, and transformation.
It is clear that our consciousness has been wired, evolutionarily, to do useful things during the day that keep us alive and safe. But I believe that what makes us special is that we can also do ‘non useful’ stuff; like making art & spiritual experiences. And the thing our late capitalist society really, really doesn’t like us doing; envisioning a radically different world. Martin Luther King’s dream is one of the most famous dreams in history; it seems to me we are in desperate need of more dreams, looking at the state of the world today. Don’t be fooled. Dreams are not idle hope. They are the experienced, embodied, envisioned, imagined, felt, bone-shaking, tasted potential.
Marieke McKenna is a dream researcher, philosopher, historian of science, DJ, music radio host and curator for Dutch National Radio 2, and founder of Mink Records. She has conducted research at the Donders Institute for Brain, Cognition and Behaviour (Radboud University) supported by the Max Planck Institute for the History of Science, interviewing over 80 leading dream researchers. She is currently leading the Advaya Dreams Course, an exploration of dream consciousness, creativity, and the future of dream-tech.
Learn more: Advaya Dreams Course
Guest Article by Marieke McKenna
Photography: Philine van den Hul