The Shape of Dreams was a new exhibit at the Dalí Museum that explored 500 years of dream-inspired paintings, from the Renaissance to the 20th-century period of Surrealism. The museum gave us the task of bringing visitors closer to these artistic styles and offering them a unique look into the mysterious world of their own dreams. Since The Dalí Museum is famous for creating remarkable interactive experiences for its visitors, our goal was to come up with something no one has ever done before. To do that, we partnered with the world’s leading artificial intelligence research lab: OpenAI.

The Dream Tapestry is an interactive experience at the Dalí Museum through which visitors can turn their dreams into art. We partnered with OpenAI to bring DALL·E to the Dalí, allowing visitors to create original, realistic Dream Paintings from a text description in the same artistic styles featured in the Shape of Dreams exhibit.

Then we took this new technology further by using AI to turn Dream Paintings into collective dreams, offering visitors an immersive experience through which they can visualize symbols and images from each other’s subconsciouses. Every few minutes, six Dream Paintings are stitched together by the AI to generate a Dream Tapestry.

With over 56,000 dreams created to date, the result is an ever-growing series of original Dream Tapestries that are exhibited on the walls of the museum. This project is DALL·E’s museum debut, and it brings a larger audience closer to the world of art.

The Dream Tapestry was designed for museum visitors of all ages with an interest in art and who are curious about experimenting with emerging technologies.

After visitors finished their tour of The Shape of Dreams exhibit, they had the opportunity to visit a special gallery dedicated to the The Dream Tapestry experience. There, they were able to use AI to create representations of their dreams in the same artistic styles from The Shape of Dreams exhibit.

This allowed for visitors to not only learn about the artists and the styles featured in the exhibit, but to also generate Dream Paintings that provided them with an immersive learning experience, unlike any other museum in the world has offered.

The Dream Tapestry has its own gallery located at the end of the Shape of Dreams exhibit. The project took over a year to be implemented, and it involved the creation of six custom-made interactive screens, plus a 12-foot-tall screen and a digital gallery wall, where the Dream Tapestries are exhibited.

First, six visitors at a time are taken to the interactive screens, which prompt them to connect their phones and describe their dreams via text. Then, for each visitor, the AI generates a Dream Painting using one of the artistic styles featured in The Shape of Dreams.

Then the AI stitches the six dreams together, creating a Dream Tapestry that is exhibited both on the 12-foot-tall screen and on the digital gallery wall.

The Dream Tapestry is available from November 25, 2022, to April 30, 2023, at the Dalí Museum in St. Petersburg, Florida.

Over 36,000 people were able to experience The Dream Tapestry from November 2022 to April 2023, generating over 56,000 dreams and achieving the museum’s goal of bringing visitors closer to the artistic styles featured in The Shape of Dreams exhibit.

OpenAI believes The Dream Tapestry experience represents a huge step in bringing the general public closer to AI’s creative capabilities. According to Natalie Summers, from OpenAI, “The dream Tapestry is the first DALL-E enabled exhibit in a museum, and we're so excited about it because it's going to be a debut of how DALL-E can really enhance all types of people's creativity.”

The project was covered by major outlets worldwide such as Fast Company, Artnet, NBC, ABC, Art Daily, and also specialized media in the advertising field, such as Ad Age and Muse by Clio, to name a few.