Sleep is a forgotten country of the mind: A vast majority of our technologies are built for our waking state, even though a third of our lives are spent asleep. Dormio interfaces with Hypnagogia, the state of consciousness between wake and sleep where we dream before falling fully unconscious.
We track sleep stage using Heart Rate Variability, Muscle Tone, and Electrodermal Activity, sending real-time stage information out to an audio voice interface which influences and extends early stage dreams.
We modernize the steel ball napping technique used by Edison, Dalí, and Tesla to generate insights, tracking, and interrupting sleep stage transitions. Dormio enables extension, direction, and capture of audio dream content, augmenting creativity by allowing access to fluid thinking present in interstitial semi-consciousness and dreams.
The Dormio project was a collaboration between Adam Horowitz (science), Tomas Vega (hardware), and Oscar Rosello (design). Dormio has been featured in many news outlets, including 60 Minutes, BBC, Vice, Forbes, Popular Mechanics, Wired, Qrius, Huffington Post, The Independent, Daily Mail, and others. Hear me talk about the project on La Mecanica del Caracol, a Spanish science podcast.