The Dalí Museum, located in St. Petersburg, Florida is dedicated to sharing the life and legacy of Salvador Dalí. Throughout his prolific career, Dalí was a pioneer in creating imaginative artistic expressions and used a multitude of tools and technologies to create his work. His boundless creativity guides the Museum to leverage cutting-edge technology in engaging ways to further educate visitors about art.
The idea for the ‘Dream Tapestry’ emerged during the Museum’s conception of a special exhibition called, ‘The Shape of Dreams’. This traditional exhibition shared a profound exploration of dream-inspired paintings spanning five centuries of art. While in development, we asked ourselves, how might Museum visitors visualize their own dreams, much like the artists’ works showcased in this exhibition?
Through partnering with leading creative agency Goodby, Silverstein and Partners, ‘Dream Tapestry’ is a first-of-its-kind interactive experience that allows visitors to turn their dreams into artistic visions. In collaboration with OpenAI, we brought the acclaimed AI technology, DALL·E to The Dalí as the first interactive use of DALL·E in a museum.
Visitors are prompted to input their dream via a simple text description, in any language. Through hundreds of millions of images and their word associations, plus a selection of art styles featured in ‘The Shape of Dreams’ exhibit, the AI technology creates a digital dream painting that has never before existed.
We then pushed this new technology further by using AI to compile individual dream images together by seamlessly connecting six visitor dream images to create one collective Dream Tapestry. Through the process, visitors learn about the AI technology used to create the one-of-a-kind image. Plus, the collective image sparks conversation and invites visitors to tap into the dream-like images from each other’s subconscious.
In addition to featuring the individual dream image and the collective dream tapestry in large scale on the Museum’s walls, visitors receive the image via downloading on their mobile device. With over 56,000 dreams created to date, the result is an ever-growing series of original Dream Tapestries. The Dream Tapestry transcends language and cultural barriers, inviting an exploration of the imagination, mirroring Dalí’s surreal visions and setting a new standard for immersive museum experiences.
Here is some of the feedback shared from our visitors about the Dream Tapestry experience:
- “I enjoyed the combination of art, description, and AI to bring dreams to reality. It made me more contemplative than I expected to be.”
- “So innovative and unexpected, and so wonderful to experience.”
- “I have never seen anything like this before!”
- “A unique experience and result was thought provoking.”
- “The compilation of everyone’s dreams was incredible. The result was stunning and I loved discussing our dreams with the other visitors.”
At its core, The Dream Tapestry redefines the visitor experience, serving as a bridge between art and technology, in alignment with The Dalí Museum’s mission of to educate and engage visitors in innovative ways. This leap was made possible through a unique collaboration of ideas and a positive integration of generative AI (DALL·E), providing a dynamic, immersive experience that resonates with today’s audiences.
partners
For The Dalí Museum
Hank Hine, Executive Director
Kathy Greif, Chief Operating Officer
Beth Harrison, Digital Experiences Director
For Goodby Silverstein & Partners
Jeff Goodby, Co-Chairman and Co-Founder
Nathan Shipley, Director of Artificial Intelligence
Ricardo Matos, Associate Creative Director
Patrick Matzenbacher, Associate Creative Director
August Bjornberg, Lead Creative Technologist
Shan Jin, Creative Technologist
Tena Goy, Executive Producer
Severin Sauliere, Senior Producer