Surrealists believed in the power of dreams. Inspired by Freud’s theories of the unconscious and dream-work, André Breton saw the irrationality of dreams as an artistic method capable of revealing new, revolutionary ways of being.

A century later, what it means to dream stretches beyond the unconscious into the disembodied processes of machine systems.

Dreams have become a metaphor for how artificial intelligence metabolises information and produces “AI slop”.

Opting out of AI systems is no longer possible. Any digitised trace will eventually reappear as a synthetic output. As AI conjures us from our information, its neural processes exceed our comprehension – amplifying our biases in the service of capitalism.

Data Dreams at the Museum of Contemporary Art brings together artists who make these tensions visible.

Hito Steyerl argues generative AI produces “mean images”: statistical averages derived from training datasets. They are “social dreams without sleep”, reflecting what society pays attention to.

Steyerl’s video installation Mechanical Kurds features footage from the Domiz refugee camp in Iraq. She follows Kurdish refugee click workers........

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