Toward Dream Cartography: Mapping Dream Space and Content

Abstract

The objective of dream cartography is to map dream content, that is, to develop new visualization methods and adapt existing ones as graphical means for an explorative dream analysis. We aim at modelling (i.e., disentangling), documenting, reuniting, and graphically depicting the dream space and other relevant psychological aspects of dreams in a meaningful but abstracted way. In this article we describe the proposed workflow for mapping dreams, focusing on data acquisition, and illustrate it with some proof-of-concept visualization examples. The dream space is fundamentally different from the real space, especially because it is not possible to consciously visit the place of the dream again. One way to address this setting issue is through data acquisition, and here we propose means for getting a more accurate description of the dream space and of other important dream elements.