The installation takes the form of a small Amazon delivery box transformed into a whimsical “dream-delivery machine.” Across the surface, I attached the bottoms of polygonal shapes, colourful LED lights, and scattered Dungeons & Dragons dice. These materials immediately signal fantasy, randomness, and narrative possibility. Inside the box, a Raspberry Pi Pico microcontroller connects to an array of buttons, LEDs, and a computer running a p5.js program. One side of the box is intentionally left open, exposing wiring that loops in and out of the cardboard. This openness suggests both vulnerability and machinery—dreams as systems that can be peeked into, but never fully understood.
When an audience member presses a button, a series of physical and digital reactions unfold: LEDs flash, chimes sound, dice rolls are translated into random events, and the p5.js interface transports the viewer into floating dream-polygons filled with cosmic imagery. The visuals draw inspiration from interactive aquarium exhibits, where visitors see themselves reflected inside generative digital worlds. Here, the viewer becomes part of the system, their simple gesture of pressing a button activating the dream-machine.
Reading Margaret Morse’s “The Poetics of Interactivity” in class shaped my conceptual approach. Morse asserts that interactivity is “not made up of endless possibilities but of historically and ideologically produced constraints”. I wanted to challenge this idea. In response, I wanted to play with constraint and unpredictability by making the interactive outcomes intentionally random. Viewers cannot control the system; they can only provoke it. Morse also writes that the relationship between humans and machines is “virtual,” yet I wanted to foreground the physical—the tactile experience of pressing buttons, seeing lights flash, and hearing sounds resonate in real space. The bodily contact becomes essential to entering the dream realm.
Reflecting on the final work, I feel the piece successfully merges playfulness with conceptual inquiry. In the future, I hope to expand the project by integrating a large monitor or projection surface, allowing the dream environment to fully envelop viewers and deepen the sense of cosmic immersion.
