Research

Dream Research

We started Elsewhere because we wanted to gain more insights into our own dreams and to help others do the same. We believe that the world would be a better place if more people understood the power of dreams, and dream research is one of ways that we continue to do that.

Below are a few of the past and current projects that we're excited to share, but we're always open to collaborations for future research. If you have any ideas, feel free to reach out to us on social media or at team@elsewhere.to.

Current Research

Elsewhere Atlas

We've always been interested in how to visualize the connections between dreams and locations in the waking world, and we've just launched our first two prototypes. The first is a symbol map which shows the top symbols and themes of different countries along with the dreaming mood in each. The second is a public map where dreamers can share the locations that featured in their own dreams. Everyone has the option to opt out of the country-level map if they wish, and the dream location map is strictly opt in.

Dreamer's Digest

We recently started a Substack where we write about the trending symbols in dreams, the countries that feature them, symbolic/linguistic analysis, and much more! All of us contribute to different parts of the digest and we do our best to release a new issue every other week.

Artemidorus Project

Our resident researcher, Victoria Philibert, is working on an interpretation system based on the works of Artemidorus, an ancient Greek dream interpreter who lived during the 2nd century C.E. This system draws from his Oneirocritica in which he lists various symbols, life situations, professions, and social classes and how they bring to light the meaning of dreams. The goal of this project is to bring Artemidorus's works back to life for use by modern dreamers and academics.

Sleep and Dream Database

Elsewhere partners with Kelly Bulkeley, dream researcher and author, to maintain the Sleep and Dream Database (SDDb). The SDDb is a large and growing archive of dream journals and surveys and provides a host of analytical tools to make the study of dreams accessible to the general public. The SDDb currently has data for 17 publicly accessible surveys and contains over 40,000 open access dream reports with demographic information for researchers.

Past Research

IASD Conference

The Elsewhere Team attends the yearly dream conference hosted by the International Association for the Study of Dreams (IASD) where we present papers, talks, and posters. We have been attending as a group since 2021, and the conference is always informative, fun, and a great place to meet other dreamers (or the makers of your favorite app!). We'll be in Ashland, OR once again this year for the conference in June.

Dreaming with AI

A paper about the use of AI for different dream interpretation modalities based on early ChatGPT-4 models which at the time we were using with Elsewhere. The paper explored the models's innate ability to understand Freudian and Jungian concepts and to perform symbolic analyses of entire dream journals. Written by Kat Juncker.

2020 Dreams

We provided data analysis, study design, and technology services for a digital project with Stanford University Press that compared dream reports and news articles from 2020. The project looked at how concerns related to COVID and other important and highly politicized events were represented in dreams. Our main contribution was an NLP tool that used Explicit Semantic Analysis and an up-to-date Wikipedia corpus which found that the content in dreams and news became increasingly similar as the year progressed.

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