This design-fiction research prototype was developed in collaboration with Enrique Encinas to explore the suspension of disbelief in speculative artefacts. Participants were asked to place a small portable device beside their bed, presented as a mechanism for capturing dreams during sleep. On returning the device, participants inserted it into a base unit that appeared to scan their retina using a small camera. Following this interaction, a poem was generated and printed.
The poem functioned as a fictional representation of the participant’s dreams and was used as a prompt to discuss understandings of dream states, hopes, and personal aspirations. Although framed as the output of a dream-capturing device, the text was generated using publicly available information about the participants, loosely reflecting aspects of their lives at the time. In use, participants frequently suspended disbelief in the artefact’s ability to capture dreams and engaged in extended discussion about the meaning of the generated poems and their relationship to personal experience.