Virginia Vigliar So today we have Saelyx Finna and Marieke McKenna who are going to speak to us about dream tech, which I'm super curious about. I am myself so interested in the dream world that I cannot wait to take the course. And we'll also have a dream club where there will be more practice around dreaming and understanding all of that. So I'm really excited. It's clearly a theme at Advaya right now. Let me introduce to you today's guests. So we have Marieke McKenna, who's a philosopher and historian with Scottish and Irish roots based in the Netherlands. She's passionate about nature, music, and creativity, and her work spans metaphysics, phenomenology, consciousness studies, musicology, and art history. Marieke's recent research explores dreaming through historical, cultural, scientific, and philosophical lenses, focusing on the phenomenology of consciousness and its ties to creativity. Beyond academia, Marieke is an artist, curator, and creative entrepreneur. She hosts a music radio show on Dutch national radio, Two DJs, runs the record label Mink Records, and teaches at conservatories and universities. So welcome, welcome, and we have Saelyx Finna, I hope I'm pronouncing it well, who is a filmmaker and dream tech researcher based in Akron, Ohio. Saelyx has presented on the neuroethics of emerging dream neurotechnologies at conferences and universities and published articles in journals such as Intermediality for their feature film on the topic. Saelyx received the inaugural Creative Science Non-fiction Accelerator Award from Sandbox Film and Game Changer Films for this film, Under the Dream. It is a work of somatic cinema about the multiverse of our dreaming minds and the stakes for the future of our dreams. So welcome to Marieke and Saelyx. I'm going to leave the floor to you to have this conversation and present your work. And yes, thank you so much for being here. And thank you, everyone, as well.
Marieke McKenna Thank you so much for that lovely introduction. And also a great overview of Advaya. It was a good reminder for me to delve back into some of the other courses. So interesting, everything that's launching at the moment. So yeah, everyone, welcome. It's really nice to have you all. I just took a little sneak peek in the gallery and saw some of your faces, which is always nice. And yeah, today we're going to be talking about dream tech. So basically, I recently filmed a six-module course for Advaya on dreams. In a much broader sense, we talked about cross-cultural perspectives on dreams, the neuroscience of dreaming, psychoanalytical perspectives, vision, like Jungian philosophy and psychology, Freud. We went into lucid dreaming, and one of the modules goes into more of the sort of history of technology and dream tech. When Advaya asked me to do these two webinars, the first one we had a couple of weeks ago was on how to cultivate a dream practice because I felt like that was a kind of logical starting point for talking about this topic. The second one, I decided to curate in a bit of a more funky and out there way because dream tech is an incredibly niche but also very cutting-edge topic. It was maybe not the most obvious topic I could have chosen. For instance, lucid dreaming would have probably had a broader appeal for many people, as it's a more widely recognized and "sexy" topic. But dream tech is something that maybe not many people are familiar with yet, and I really wanted to choose this topic because I feel like it is not only incredibly interesting but also very contemporary. Technology is developing at such a rapid pace right now, and so many bizarre things are happening with AI, but at the same time, really interesting things are emerging. I feel that, as a philosopher and historian of science, I have a responsibility to also talk about the topics that make me a bit scared.
I wanted to start this conversation by giving you a little sketch of what the dream research community is like. That will lead to the story of how I met Saelyx, who I invited for this conversation. I invited her because, as far as I’m concerned, she’s one of the world’s experts on dream tech but also just dreaming in general. She knows so many people in the field—not just scientists but also people working in more spiritual dimensions, shamans, artists, etc. I’ve learned so much from her in the past two years. She became a very close friend. We have a Zoom dream group with our Belgian friend Johannes, in which we share our dreams. I felt it would be really interesting to bring her on, also because of her background as a documentary filmmaker. She’s approaching this topic as both a researcher and a creative. I’m approaching it from a critical thinker’s perspective, with a background in philosophy and the history of science. So we’re looking at it from two different perspectives, which I think are quite complementary.
To give you a bit of background, my own research is in philosophy. I did a multi-year project on how different cultures view dreams and how the history of Western science has viewed dreams, along with what kind of research has been conducted since the 1950s up until now. But I also went back much further, looking at people like Jung and Freud, but also ancient traditions like the Greeks and Romans, and even cultures like Tibetan Buddhism and Native American traditions. These are all things we’ve covered in my upcoming course for Advaya. I gained access to such a broad overview of these different ways of looking at dreams because I was doing an oral history project, meaning I interviewed people who work with dreams—ranging from neuroscientists to psychologists to artists. This gave me a very broad view of the topic, and it was an interesting process. I also worked for a neuroscientific laboratory in the Netherlands, called the Donors Institute, which focuses on sleep and, in particular, dreaming. It’s one of the leading laboratories in dream research, especially regarding lucid dreaming. I was sent to a conference by them, which they thought would be a good place to interview people. I couldn’t believe there was a conference that brought together people who study dreams, not just scientists or psychologists, but people from all kinds of dimensions. The conference took place in Tucson, Arizona, which was quite a journey from the Netherlands. That’s where I met Saelyx, and we instantly became friends and started having conversations about dream technology. She was actually the one who introduced me to the broader field of dream tech. I knew a bit about it because I was specifically researching lucid dreaming, and as we will see later in this talk, there are lucid dream induction devices (these goggle-like things) that we were using in the laboratory to experiment with lucid dream induction. But Saelyx really expanded my understanding of the field.
The dream research community is fascinating because there are laboratories around the world studying dreams. It’s not a huge field, with maybe only a couple hundred people really specializing in it, but it’s growing. I started asking myself, as a historian, why this topic is still so niche, given how important dreams are in relation to things like memory consolidation, mental health, PTSD, creativity, problem-solving, and more. For example, lucid dreaming is a very interesting phenomenon, which has been studied through neuroscientific methods like fMRI scans. You would think that, because dreaming is something we all do—we spend about six and a half years of our lives dreaming—it would be more prominent in research. But there has been a much more substantial resurgence in research on psychedelics and meditation since the 70s, but not as much on dreams. One reason could be public perception, particularly influenced by Freudian psychology, which contrasted with behaviorism in psychology, which said we should only focus on observable behavior to understand someone's psychological state. Of course, this changed with the rise of neuroscience, but still, dream research remains a small field. So, I think today’s topic is really important because we’re going to give you an overview of how technology, in particular, relates to dreams—what kind of technologies are out there, what type of research is being done, and what people are trying to achieve through engaging with technology in their dream spaces. Saelyx has prepared an amazing overview of this for you. One thing I’d like to say as a sort of contextual framework for this talk is that, for me, dream tech is a case study of a larger question we’re dealing with right now: How do we relate to the digital world in general? How do we manage our attention in this space, and how do we feel about new technologies like AI? Dream tech offers a unique way to address these questions. There are also ethical concerns about the use of this technology, which Saelyx and I have discussed and are going to touch on today. This is a very new field that hasn’t been discussed in the public realm that much yet. That’s why I think this webinar is so special—it’s a topic that hasn’t been widely addressed, and I hope it will be a fascinating space for dialogue. Feel free to share your thoughts and concerns in the chat—we’d love to hear from you.
So without further ado, I’d love to introduce our special guest, my dear friend Saelyx Finna.
Saelyx Finna Marieke, thanks so much. It’s great to be here with you all. Thanks so much for being here, and hopefully, we can leave you with some juicy new insights, questions, and knowledge. I’m also curious—when you hear the phrase "dream tech," what do you think it is? If you want to drop anything that comes to mind in the chat, whether you’ve heard about it before or it’s just something that springs to mind, I’d love to see how your thoughts stack up against the examples we’re going to discuss today.
I’m going to share my screen and dive into a little slideshow. We’re not going to go in-depth on too many examples, but I want to give an overview of several of them. We’ll focus a little more on lucid dream devices since those are the most prevalent, but we’ll also talk about the provocative early days of dream recording, and then explore an ethical case study that both Marieke and I have had some direct interaction with. As you’re probably aware, lucid dreaming is when you are aware that you’re dreaming and may even be able to influence the direction of the dream. So, there are devices that aim to trigger lucidity in dreams. We’ll also look at a device that interacts with hypnagogia, that liminal state just as you're falling asleep. It’s a very creative and imaginative time. Targeted memory reactivation and lucidity reactivation are techniques being used in dream science labs to pair cues with associations while people are awake, which are then reintroduced during sleep in hopes of triggering lucidity. Monitoring brain data is a big part of this process in order to optimize the chances of the participant becoming lucid. We’ll also cover a few apps that help with dream journaling, dream interpretation, and lucid dream training. VR is being used for various things as well, such as training for lucid dreaming, PTSD nightmare therapy, and even physical rehabilitation. There are also some new and exciting generative AI projects emerging, for example, combining generative AI and VR to re-experience or relive dreams by having the AI create dream objects in VR, so you can actually manipulate and spend time with the objects from your dream recreated in virtual reality. Optogenetics, a neuroscience method, is also being used to infuse neurons with proteins that can be activated by light. This has even been used to turn REM sleep on and off by exposing particular neuronal populations to light, which is very far out!
Hypnagogia, to return to this example, is this liminal state just as you're falling asleep. Many creators throughout history have worked actively with this state because they realized that it’s incredibly creative. It's great for problem-solving, but it’s also highly amnesiac. Typically, you pass through hypnagogia and fall asleep, forgetting whatever happens in that state. For example, Thomas Edison would hold a steel ball in his hand while napping, and when his muscles relaxed, the ball would drop, waking him up. He’d then immediately write down whatever he was thinking about.
Fast forward to several years ago when researchers at MIT developed a simple device that you wear on your hand. With just a couple of biometrics, it can detect when you’re in hypnagogia. They set it up so that you can incubate thoughts or dreams within this state. The success rate of incorporating your thoughts was really high. At the end of today’s session, I’ll give you a link to a self-timer version of this that works pretty well, and you can use it at home just through a browser. We'll talk more about the mechanics of this later.
But for now, what's important is what this emerging tech means and what the repercussions and potential consequences are. One thing that happened with this device is that the research was discovered by a beer company in the US, which decided to use the findings for a marketing stunt during the Super Bowl a few years ago. I'm going to switch to a video now to show you behind-the-scenes footage of that marketing stunt, as well as some responses from the dream research community. This will segue us into a broader conversation. Just so you know, the video will start with a simulation of what it might feel like if you were participating in one of these experiments.
Marieke McKenna Thank you for giving us your dream data. You did great. Be sure to pick up your compensation from Marieke, and let's move on to the next subject.
Saelyx Finna I think we’ve solved how to do dream advertising. The way we’re talking about doing it is probably the most ethical and effective way. Everything in our capitalist culture runs on advertising. If you don’t want dream advertising, well, I guess you can just pay for the subscription.
Marieke McKenna They wanted to know if it would be possible to incubate an ad in a dream.
Virginia Vigliar The goal was to plant this surreal cause-related ad into people’s subconscious. I was walking through snow with my mom in a helicopter, and I saw some mountains. Do I think planting dreams into people is ethical?
Saelyx Finna The idea here is that maybe this is the future of advertising. Imagine if it was Coca-Cola, and they wanted you to feel nostalgia or have the urge to quench your thirst. That could be a potential future if we don’t create safeguards to prevent the use of wearable technology that tracks your sleep activity.
Marieke McKenna Whatever you put out will absolutely be used by marketers, advertisers, and even military organizations. But dreams are much less defended and more vulnerable. Don’t underestimate the corporate world.
Saelyx Finna It’s pretty wild. I’m going to move this so I can get back into the conversation. We’ll talk more about the ethics of this. Actually, let’s dive into that, and then we can wrap up this part of the presentation by talking about dream recording, which is the next stage. We were both involved in this case study about the dream community’s reaction to the beer company’s marketing stunt. What was your experience of that, Marieke?
Marieke McKenna For me, it was interesting on many levels. First, it’s an interesting topic, but also, the timing of when I entered this field was just after this had happened. There was a slightly heated discussion going on. To give you some context, the dream research community is relatively small. Everyone kind of knows each other. Some researchers have been in the field since the 80s, 90s, or early 2000s, and then there’s a group of younger researchers, perhaps PhD students or those who just finished their PhDs, entering the field. There’s a bit of an age divide.
What’s interesting is that research from the dream research community was used by a company. This happens often in science, because once you publish your research, it becomes public knowledge. Others can use it. But it brings up important questions about the ethics of science. Who funds the research, and what happens after it’s published?
For me, personally, it was interesting because, as a historian and philosopher, I’ve seen parallels with the concerns about developing nuclear weapons. The questions raised about the ethical implications of dream advertising are similar to those we faced with nuclear technology. The concern is, what will the consequences be of dream advertising? It’s a private space that we have left—our dreams—and it’s important to protect it. The marketing stunt sparked a lot of debate, but it also led to some beautiful conversations about the ethics of dream technology.
Saelyx Finna Yes, many researchers signed an op-ed where they voiced concerns, particularly about the lack of legal protections for the dream space. No one had thought to create laws to protect sleep from advertising. This is an area where we need specific regulations. It’s also connected to discussions around cognitive liberty and neuro rights, which some countries are adding to their constitutions to protect mental privacy.
Although the idea of dream advertising sounds dystopian, it motivates me to raise these ethical questions before it’s too late. Too often, we react to technology after it’s already disrupted our well-being. In this case, we have an opportunity to be proactive and shape how this technology develops.
We’ll wrap up today’s examples of dream tech with dream recording. The idea of using neural imaging to reconstruct or view the images people see in their minds, whether awake or asleep, is a huge ethical issue. Back in 2013, there was a proof of concept using fMRI to reconstruct images seen in dreams. More recently, researchers have developed a technique that might be easier and cheaper than fMRI. It uses functional near-infrared spectroscopy, which measures blood oxygenation using light. This technique can be used with smaller devices like EEG headbands.
Marieke McKenna One thing I’d like to add about the dream research community’s response: The images we saw earlier—those not-so-accurate dream reconstructions—were a point of concern. The younger generation of dream researchers had big ethical concerns about these applications, while some of the older researchers didn’t see it as a big issue. They believed it was unlikely that companies like Coors would really be able to place advertisements in our dreams.
Some of the older researchers felt the controversy was overblown. They saw it as just another attention-grabbing advertising technique. Even if they didn’t manage to place beer in our dreams, they succeeded in getting us to talk about it.
But this also brings up a bigger question: What relationships do researchers have with companies funding their work? This raises concerns about the objectivity of science when financial interests are at play. These are important questions we need to discuss in the context of dream research.
Saelyx Finna If you look online for more information on these examples, you’ll find a lot of media hype. For instance, the 2013 dream recording study often resurfaces in articles, even though it’s not new research. It’s a classic example of how sensational topics are recycled. Most recent coverage focuses on a startup claiming to have facilitated two lucid dreamers communicating via a server. If this claim is true, it’s a significant step forward in the field, but the research community is skeptical because it was first released as a press release, not a peer-reviewed study.
This claim is part of a larger effort to create products that offer lucid dreaming on demand. While it’s an exciting idea, the way information is presented in the media can sometimes lack accuracy. So if you're researching these topics, be sure to cross-check your sources.
Virginia Vigliar I’d like to jump in with a question. The title of this webinar was “Dream as the Last Uncolonized Frontier,” and I resonate with that because dreams are such an intimate, personal space. Hearing about these technologies makes me fearful, but the way you’ve spoken about it, Saelyx, is reassuring. How do we protect this space? What are some ways we can safeguard our dream space?
Saelyx Finna I think it’s about protecting all aspects of your inner life. Anything you do to combat the external stimuli of the world—whether digital or otherwise—helps protect your dreams. Our dreams are sacred spaces, but just like anything else in our lives, the information we consume influences them. Studies show that many people already dream about brands because they’re so exposed to advertisements throughout the day. So, personal information hygiene is key.
On a larger scale, people like Marieke and I are trying to raise awareness and facilitate larger conversations to put structural protections in place.
Marieke McKenna Virginia, you posted something beautiful on Instagram today about how you relate to platforms. After watching an AI video about Gaza yesterday, I had a vivid dream featuring Trump, which really annoyed me. It was a reflection of how external stimuli are seeping into our dream space. For me, the issue is how to stay politically engaged while also setting boundaries with what influences our inner worlds. As creative people, we need that space for ideation and problem-solving. So, I agree with Saelyx—it's also about your daytime information hygiene.
Virginia Vigliar Yes, I never dreamed of my iPhone, and I’ve always thought that’s a nice space where my phone doesn’t invade.
If anyone has a question, feel free to write it in the chat, and I’ll read it out. Someone asked about lucid dreaming—I've had vivid dreams my whole life with almost perfect recall but have never been able to achieve true lucidity. Do you have any advice for lucid dreaming without devices? Or perhaps, does my understanding of lucid dreaming need to shift?
We have a beautiful answer from the School of Liminal Arts, but feel free to add anything if you’d like.
Marieke McKenna We actually created a whole module on this for the course. It's a really interesting question, and it's an important one. But I also kind of feel like with this webinar being particularly about dream tech, maybe it's nice to refer to, even if it's not that module. For instance, we have an exercise related to that module, which actually goes through all the lucid dream induction approaches, and which ones have been proven to be most effective in a scientific context. But yeah, there's definitely a lot to be found online about this, just as a sort of quick little bite. You can look at yoga nidra, these sorts of approaches where you're going from the waking state into lucid states. But you can also look at lucid dream induction, where you're going from the REM sleep state into lucid states, which can be through things like reality checking during the day or approaches where, for instance, you set your alarm at 5 a.m. or 8 a.m., then do something else, go back to sleep. It's called the wake-back-to-bed approach. But yeah, there are many sources for this online, but then also we created our own source. So I'd like to refer to that.
Virginia Vigliar There's a really relevant question. I don't know if you were finished, Marieke, but yeah. So Josien asks, "I work in ethics, and I'm drafting a paper advocating for an extra-prudent approach to lucid dreaming, sort of like an ethical checklist, reminiscent of the dream engineering ethics. My question is, who will be mad at it, and will it be a good thing? Any idea on how to balance ethics so as not to slip into gatekeeping?"
Saelyx Finna I feel like there's so much more context, and this question deserves more than the couple of minutes we have left. But I do think that one thing that's clear is that dreaming is a universal experience that no single discipline, or certainly not an industry, can claim, right? So it's going to take so many people at the table with so many different perspectives and knowledge bases to contribute to developing an ethics around all of this. And so yes, and yes, I remember you too. It's good to see you again. I feel like, just honestly, listen to yourself about what your role is in contributing to all of this. You're not solving the problem. You're not gatekeeping the ethics, because you're not in a position to gatekeep the ethics, right? You're more trying to find what your unique contribution is to this larger project around all of this. I'm not sure what you mean by "who will be mad at it," but if someone's mad about a goal of bringing an ethical framework to this work, then let them be mad.
Marieke McKenna Yeah, I agree with that. Sometimes it's good if people get mad, you know? That's kind of also the whole point of these sorts of critical discussions. Science should be a place where you're able to say what you truly think is adding to the knowledge of society or truth or all of these things. So yeah, we have one more question from Lou. Do you have a ritual or routine before sleep to enter into the dream realm? What's your routine, Saelyx?
Saelyx Finna Oh, I like pray to my dreams. At the end of the night, when I'm going to bed, I speak directly to them. I frequently will ask for clarity or insight on a specific thing, and they never answer me directly—very rarely will the answer be direct. But that's the thing. It's not speaking in your language of wakefulness. You have to meet it where it's coming from. So yeah, I really just try to keep that dialogue very explicitly open.
Virginia Vigliar I love that answer. I would close, but Marieke, is there anything you want to say about the course? We've left the discount here in the chat, and obviously, I want to thank Saelyx for their incredible work and presentation. I will definitely dig deeper. And I wonder if these apps you suggested—I'll text you later. But Marieke, yeah, well?
Marieke McKenna One thing I'd like to emphasize is that Saelyx is making this amazing film. So how can we stay up to date with when that’s launching?
Saelyx Finna You'll know. We don’t have a website or social media yet; we're not at the stage of having a following like that. But I'm so easy to find. I'm the only Saelyx Finna in the world. You can email me. I'm happy to get you on the internal email list. It'll still be some years until the film is out, but we are moving forward and are super excited. We actually have a short film coming out next year that's a proof of concept for the feature. I'll make sure Advaya gets info about that and can share it out.
Marieke McKenna I'm basically messaging Saelyx once a month, being like, “Is the film ready yet? Is the film ready?” I'm really excited for it. So, yeah, about the course. I mean, this was a very tech-focused branch of the dream world. We also went deep into really different routes, like, for instance, dream symbolism, the history of psychoanalysis, and the Jungian module. I personally really enjoyed filming the cross-cultural modules. What I really try to do is give a cohesive overview. Obviously, we can’t cover everything, but we go into things like the monotheistic religions, various indigenous perspectives from all around the world, such as Celtic perspectives. We also covered a lot of Eastern philosophies like Tibetan Buddhism and Hinduism. There’s a lot of material if you're interested in cross-cultural perspectives and anthropology. I did my best to summarize the neuroscience of dreaming, which is a very interesting topic. I was very lucky to be involved in a laboratory environment for a while, so there’s a lot more going on there. Related to the question we received earlier, there's one whole module on lucid dreaming. Of course, we always get the question: "How can I induce lucid dreaming?" I’ve tried to answer that in a very matter-of-fact way, going over what we’ve found to be the most effective lucid dream induction approaches in the laboratory. So all of that is available in the course. You can check it out; we have the courses up on the platform.
