Sometimes we dream things so strange and vivid that we wish we could paint them or turn them into a movie. Sometimes our dreams are pure surrealism — absurd, cinematic, impossible. The kind of chaos that only happens when we are asleep, and every screenwriter or creative would secretly envy.

And now, it seems like that might actually be possible.

A Dutch design studio, Modem, has created a device that records your dreams. They called it the Dream Recorder.

Here is how it works: you wake up, tell the device about your dream, the device listens, transcribes your voice, and sends the text to a generative video model. Within minutes, your dream becomes a short film — a hazy, flickering reel that looks like it has been pulled from another world.

The video isn’t realistic — and it is not meant to be. The images appear grainy, blurry, layered, somewhere between early cinema and memory. Modem worked with French artist Alexis Jamet to design this visual language — one that feels closer to how we actually see dreams: out of focus, emotional, unstable.

“AI generates images by filling in blanks, stitching together fragments of learned data into something coherent but often strange. That process mirrors how our minds construct dreams: nonlinear, symbolic, filled with distortions and substitutions,” says Modem to It's Nice That.

The Dream Recorder is small, soft-edged, made of transparent resin that glows faintly when active — like an object from a half-remembered sci-fi film. Inside, there is a Raspberry Pi, a microphone, a small display, and a local AI model that can run offline. You don’t need a server or an app — just you, your dream, and this quiet box that listens.

Each unit can store up to seven dreams — one for each day of the week. After that, the new ones overwrite the old. Modem says that it is deliberate. It is not a cloud for hoarding dreams; it is a weekly rhythm. You remember, reflect, and let go.

Of course, it is not a “real dream recorder” in the sci-fi sense — it doesn’t read your brainwaves or project REM images to a screen. It is a translator. It works with your words, your interpretation, your storytelling. In a way, the machine just holds up a mirror: it reflects how you describe your own unconscious.

Sounds good, doesn’t it? The only thing left is not to forget the dream once you wake up.