Dreams of Blindness: An AI-Mediated Workflow for Creative Representation in VR Documentary
Creativity & Cognition July 13, 2026 DOI: 10.1145/3803784.3816877 (opens in new tab)
Study at a glance
AI-extracted from the abstract| Characteristics | Theoretical or philosophical paper Peer reviewed |
|---|---|
| Key points | Argues that in AI-supported creative documentary work, meaning is produced through iterative human judgment over AI-generated candidates, and proposes an AI-mediated workflow for transforming dream narratives, including those of visually impaired participants, into immersive VR scenes that emphasize non-visual perception and affective structure. |
Abstract
Representing subjective experience poses a challenge for documentary practice, particularly for phenomena such as dreams that lack direct visual referents. This demo presents an AI-mediated workflow for transforming dream narratives into immersive VR scenes, in which AI generates candidate representations and human creators iteratively refine them through selection, rejection, and abstraction. Grounded in Dreams of Blindness, the system reconstructs dream experiences of visually impaired participants, emphasizing non-visual perception and affective structure. The demo foregrounds evaluation as a central mechanism in human–AI creative collaboration, where meaning is shaped through iterative judgment, while positioning AI as a generative starting point that facilitates public creative engagement and invites participants to reflect on and reinterpret their own experiences.