The Dream Lab
an agent that dreams on my music
Every week an autonomous agent builds a new interactive piece from Karel's recordings, a second agent critiques it, and Karel reviews what it makes. Everything it has ever built is here.
1,258 experiments · 1,323 cycles · a new one every week
- c16032HeadnaveWalk his nave with your head.→
- c16000MorphonateA membrane his harmony grows — Karel's full real recording feeds a living GPU reaction–diffusion organism that his chords seed and steer, so the image is never the same at minute f→
- c15824CanonTwo hands, one recording, two voices. This deepens 15760-conduct from a single conducted take into two-hand polyphonic conducting: Karel's one real piano take is split into two ind→
- c15536Antiphon"What if five of Karel's separate takes were scattered across a dark cathedral as distinct voices calling and answering each other antiphonally — and you had to WALK between them t→
- c15440SpheresWhat if the real, current sky conducted Karel's own piano — the true positions of the planets right now layering his recordings into an ever-different music of the spheres?→
- c13904live HPSS un-mixerWhat if you could reach into your own recording and lift the melody off the pulse — pull it into its harmonic (sustained chords) and percussive (attack / pedal transients) layers a→
- c13840Hallofsongs"Walk inside your own catalog — and where you stand IS the mix."→
- c14784NaveRoom, not a mixer. Walk around inside a cathedral built from one of Karel's own recordings and hear the piano ring off the real walls — a tight slap-back near a pillar, a wide bloo→
- c700Welcome HomeThe one question: *What is the sanctioned, copy-me way to put Karel's REAL music inside a prototype — anonymously, no login, safely limited?*→
- c703Harmonic BloomThe one question: *What if you could SEE Karel's harmony — watch each chord change re-bloom a mandala, and feel the form move underneath?*→
- c11680CorridorWhat if the near-death tunnel of light were an actual TUNNEL — a glowing corridor of cloud you fly down toward the light at the end, faster on every beat?→
- c1081Singularity Fall> The one question: *What if you fell toward a black hole — light bending around > it, your own sound red-shifting — until you crossed the horizon and the universe > swallowed itse→
Lead Time
What if Karel's piano responded to where your hand is about to be — ~120 ms into your future — so the music leads your gesture instead of lagging it, and your own predictability be
Open →Inner Ear
Eyes closed, headphones on: one of Karel's real recordings is split into three perceptual voices and HRTF-panned onto a dome around your head, and your body sculpts where it lives.
Open →Tunnelward
One question: what if one of Karel's quietest piano takes carried you down a receding tunnel toward an emerging warm light — his music driving the descent, your hands steering and
Open →Cascade
What if Karel's piano became a body of liquid light with a continuous surface — and the fluid's currents *generated* the sound, grain by grain, rather than filtering a loop? Cascad
Open →Stillwell
What if a piece rewarded stillness instead of motion — a warm cosmic-ambient field that is agitated and scattered while you move, and slowly coalesces into a single still luminous
Open →Chromafield
Chromafield turns one of Karel's real piano takes into a living chemistry you grow with your body. A Gray-Scott reaction-diffusion membrane is simulated on the GPU — two reagents A
Open →Stillpoint
> *What if Resonance were something you do with your eyes closed — your body > turns and leans to navigate a 3D binaural field of Karel's piano, and the > screen is almost dark bec
Open →Duet
What if two people in one camera frame could conduct one of Karel's piano takes together — and their *togetherness* (gesture sync) is the reward?
Open →Foreshadow
*What if Karel's piano's next harmony arrived as felt WEATHER, not a readout?*
Open →Ember Field
A warm room you stand inside for ten minutes. Karel's piano becomes a slow, breathing ember-cloud — tens of thousands of embers advected through a curl-noise flow field — that you
Open →The Membrane That Filters the Piano
A large mass-spring membrane (a pinned grid of ~10,000 nodes) is simulated entirely on the GPU with WebGPU compute shaders, and its emergent physical state becomes the filter shapi
Open →Sever
What if you could physically reach into Karel's piano and pull its ringing resonance apart from its hammer attacks — separating one recording into two living layers you re-balance
Open →PRIOR BODY
A closed-loop spatial-hearing lab. One of Karel's real piano recordings is hidden at a direction on a sphere that slowly drifts around you; you point your body (or the pointer) tow
Open →Vantage
Karel's one piano take, exploded into a swarm of sound-bodies orbiting you in 3-D. His single recording loops pitch-clean and is split into five parallel band voices (sub, low-mid,
Open →Roundtable
One of Karel's real piano takes is laid around a ring — angle is position in the piece — and a playhead sweeps that ring in synced time, landing on the same instant for every liste
Open →Pitch / Time Lattice
What if you could transpose Karel's piano's *pitch* independently of its *time* — slow one of his recordings to a glacial drone without dropping the register, or stretch it with no
Open →Chamber
Play Karel's piano through the resonant ghost of one of its own moments. Fly through a 3-D resonance chamber built from his recording, and wherever you move re-selects which instan
Open →Mosaic Field
Fly a sphere-gate through a volumetric 3-D cloud of your own piano recording's notes and re-sequence the performance in space — the order your motion sweeps the cells, not the orig
Open →Datum
What if you could pull Karel's piano recording apart into its raw spectral DATA — a stark Ikeda-style datamatics grid of magnitude AND phase — and reach your hand in to time-stretc
Open →Faultline
*What if the planet's LIVE earthquakes reached into one of Karel's piano recordings and froze it — each real tremor blooming his take into a spectral cloud you fly your hand across
Open →Physforge
What if you could forge Karel's recorded piano into a different physical material in real time — soften it to felt or harden it to glass, shrink its body to a music-box or swell it
Open →Sing the Shape, Not the Note
The lab's first mouth-driven piece. Karel's real piano loops; the shape of your mouth is the conductor — you sing the shape, not the note.
Open →Earwell
Earwell lets you walk through the harmony of one of Karel's piano recordings by ear alone. A ring of resonant "stations" surrounds a cursor; each station is a distinct chord region
Open →Lenticule
One question: What if two of Karel's recordings were woven into a single *lenticular* print — and moving your head (or dragging) swept the viewing angle so the woven image *and* th
Open →Times Ring
What if conducting your own recording sculpted a living string-art figure — and the exact number of petals you *see* is the harmonic color you *hear*?
Open →Phosphor Helm
An oscilloscope you wear. Karel's real catalog recording always plays, and your head is the conductor. An X–Y vectorscope plots the left channel against the right channel; for a st
Open →Cymatica
*What if your body could conduct the actual physical standing-wave geometry — the Chladni sand figure — of the harmony inside one of Karel's own piano recordings?*
Open →RESONHAND
*What if your two hands could reach into one of Karel's piano recordings and make its own harmony ring out — a resonant halo tuned to the exact chord he's playing in that moment?*
Open →Imbue
One question: what if one of Karel's recordings became the resonant *body* that another of his recordings plays inside — and your body chose which *moment* of that second recording
Open →Graft
What if two of Karel's recordings became one living voice — one take lending its shape (its chords, its dynamics, its phrasing) and the other lending its body (the piano you actual
Open →Cantor
What if you could sing *with* one of Karel's recordings — not over it, but *into* it — so that your sung note made his piano resonate at that pitch?
Open →Vicinity
Several of Karel's recordings live at different places in one dark room, each pinned in true 3D with HRTF spatial audio. Your body is the listener: move side to side to pass betwee
Open →Particle Engine
The showcase (default). One question for Karel: *do I want this crisp, sound-driven particle look as the lead visual in journeys, instead of shader-drawn particles?* Pure black, no
Open →Surgeline
What if your body's motion dynamics composed the energy ARC of one of Karel's real piano recordings over minutes — a journey-engine where sustained broad movement BUILDS the piece
Open →Emberfield
Your memory of one of Karel's recordings as a field of embers that fade unless your attention keeps them warm — so what survives at minute five is a self-portrait of where you look
Open →Rerise
What if memory were bidirectional? Instead of only depositing new states as you conduct, you can settle and descend back down through everything you've already laid down — and the
Open →Sediment
*What if your body's phrasing left PERMANENT STRATA — so by minute 5 the piece is a geological record of everything you did, not just what you're doing now?*
Open →Formantwell
What if your two hands could reshape the vocal tract of your OWN piano recording — morphing its timbre continuously glassy → woody → vowel-like at exactly-fixed pitch — by extracti
Open →Four-part voice leading in the chord of the moment
The one question. What if your two hands harmonized your own piano recording *in the key and chord of the moment* — pull your hands apart and the single take fans open into a chord
Open →Ebbline
What if leaning your body forward and back made one of Karel's real piano recordings flow forward or run backward — your torso the live performer the playback engine follows, in ra
Open →Gaitpulse
The one question: *What if your whole body's SWAY became the PULSE of one of Karel's recordings — conduct the rhythm with your body, not your hands?*
Open →Facescore
One real recording from Karel's catalog loops at normal speed. Your face conducts its articulation and brightness, and the sound is drawn as a living ink line-score. Input is the f
Open →Harmonize your recording in the chord of the moment
The one question. What if your two hands harmonized your own piano recording *in the key and chord of the moment* — pull your hands apart and the single take fans open into a chord
Open →Throatmorph
What if you could reshape the *resonant body / vocal tract* of your own piano recording with your two hands — morphing its timbre continuously from glassy → woody → vowel-like, whi
Open →Harmonize your recording in a current of light
The one question. What if you could pour your own recording into a body of flowing luminous light and harmonize it with your two hands — pull your hands apart and the single piano
Open →Timbrefold
What if you could reshape the *resonant body* / vocal tract of your own recording with your two hands — bending its timbre from glassy to woody to vowel-like, while its pitch and m
Open →Murmuration
Stir a living flock of your own recording. Roughly 140,000 self-driven agents (each a position and a heading, moving at constant speed) obey a mean-field Vicsek alignment rule on t
Open →Slowbloom
The stiller you hold your whole body, the slower TIME flows through Karel's real piano recording — with the pitch frozen, so a single chord blooms and hangs for many seconds. Whole
Open →Tidewell
Tilt your head to conduct the tonal register of Karel's real piano recording — tip right and the air/treble rises and pours right, tip left and the body/bass swells left, while the
Open →look at your recording to hear it
What if you could LOOK at your recording to hear it — turn your head to sweep a spectral searchlight across one of Karel's piano takes, so wherever your gaze lands, that band of th
Open →Breathtide (flow)
Route: /dream/18196-breathtide-flow
Open →Formfold
*What if you could conduct the ARRANGEMENT and navigate the FORM of your own recording with your whole body — opening your arms to bloom the full texture, contracting to a solo cor
Open →your ten fingers each hold a strand of your own recording
A per-finger orchestration conductor. One of Karel's real piano takes (default *Welcome Home*) loops and is split into ten parallel band/voice strands spanning bass → air. Each of
Open →AUREOLE
What if you conducted the acoustic SPACE your recording lives in with your face — lean in and it comes close and dry, lean back and it dissolves into a vast reverberant cathedral?
Open →Cantormap
Two hands sculpt WHERE one of Karel's own piano recordings lives in a 3-D HRTF room around your head.
Open →Reharmonize
What if you could play chords on your OWN recorded piano — re-harmonizing one of Karel's real takes into a live choir of itself? Reharmonize turns a single Welcome Home / Snowflake
Open →Ledger
What if the world's live financial trades — the mundane torrent of money changing hands right now — conducted one of Karel's real piano recordings? Ledger takes a live tape of real
Open →Scriptorium
The live, worldwide stream of Wikipedia edits conducts one of Karel's real piano takes — each edit sounds a grain of his recording, and drifts up as a warm glyph of the article bei
Open →the sky's clock conducts a piano take
What if the sky's own clock over you right now — where the sun and moon sit above your horizon — conducted one of Karel's real piano takes, so it sounds like daylight where you are
Open →The Station Conducts a Take
What if the one crewed outpost overhead — the International Space Station crossing the sky right now — conducted one of Karel's real piano takes as it passes, sounding present and
Open →Recent cycles (1323 total)▾
⭐ Morning digest▾
> Jury verdict today: leadtime is the best new idea in weeks — a genuinely new verb that rests every banned substrate — but it's still a 3/5 and the 4+ ceiling hasn't moved in eight fires; today's tone is *take leadtime to a four, don't start a tenth.* See docs/dreams/JURY.md.
> Today's move: the jury said "finish to a 4, stop minting 2/5s" — but all three of its named candidates were blocked (fluxmesh-3 = WebGPU, banned this fire; lagduet / spatial-duet = banned substrate AND need your Duet check). So I took the jury's OR-branch: raise the ceiling with a genuinely new verb on a fresh substrate. See docs/dreams/STATE.md / JURY.md.
> New: `25440-leadtime` — Karel's piano answers where your hand is ABOUT to be (~120 ms ahead), so the music LEADS your gesture instead of lagging it. A short-horizon predictor runs ahead of your motion and drives a varispeed scrub + tuned resonant comb of your real take — push ahead and his music literally pulls forward in time. And the twist: the prediction's *error* is the timbre — move smoothly and the resonance stays clean and in tune; move jittery and it detunes and swarms. Your predictability is the instrument. Open: https://getresonance.vercel.app/dream/25440-leadtime
Why this one is different
- A new control verb, not a new skin. It's the lab's first "speculative execution" piece — predict the gesture and pre-commit the audio ahead of it, instead of smoothing to chase it. Grounded in a fresh NIME 2026 paper (Smith & Pardo). Nothing in the lab has done this (foreshadow forecasts the *music*; this forecasts *you*).
- It rests the banned substrates. The jury banned a 5th/6th WebGPU, a 6th raw-WebGL2, and a 5th HRTF-dome this fire. This is three.js + intense violet (the jury's named freshest palette) — none of them.
- Drag the lead slider to 0 ms and the music lags you again. That built-in A/B is the fastest way to *feel* the whole idea in ten seconds.
Needs your 30-second check (I can't do these from the cloud)
- Lead Time with your webcam on: does the lead dot visibly reach AHEAD of your palm, and does the piano feel like it's leading your hand? The pointer + arrow-key path is traced-and-verified in code; the camera-hand layer and the live audio feel are the parts only you can confirm. (A local smoke-test is blocked here — every route 500s because the sandbox has no Supabase env for the middleware; production has it, so the live link works.)
- Still open from before: Duet (
24360-duet) — the two-person webcam path. It's the key that unlockslagduet, the one genuinely new verb still sitting in the bank.
Also explored (banked, not shipped)
aheadhand— the SAME idea voiced as a granular scrubber + a comet whose predicted head leads your real hand. Clean build, lost to leadtime on visceral-ness. Seed inIDEAS.md(2026-11-08).
Open questions for Karel
- Did "finish to a 4" mean I should have carried fluxmesh cycle 3 even though it's WebGPU (banned this fire by the diversity audit)? I read the two as: don't *mint* new WebGPU, but the carry is allowed — yet I chose the fresh-verb branch to honor the hard substrate-rest. If you'd rather I just carry fluxmesh-3 next fire and ignore the WebGPU ban for a declared multi-cycle commitment, say so and I will.