The Old Times

Joseph and His Amazing Electric Dreams: A Modern Story of Dreams and Forgiveness GOES LIVE!

The journey through the “Thinking Digitally: Electric Dreams” module has been a transformative experience, evolving from initial uncertainty about digital tools into a degree of competence of the “dreaming machines” that define modern AI. Guided by Matt Gwyther’s methodical, step-by-step approach, I feel I have built a strong base of knowledge that bridged the gap between theory and practical creative production.

The following 12 steps outline the comprehensive path from the initial brief to the final exhibition of Joseph and His Amazing Electric Dreams: A Modern Story of Dreams and Forgiveness.

The 12-Step Journey to Exhibition

1. Receipt of the Brief: The journey began with the “Electric Dreams” project overview, inviting exploration of AI tools as a metaphor for the subconscious mind. This established the conceptual framework: I am not just a user, but a “Human Interpreter” of machine-generated dreams.
2. Foundation Building: I mastered fundamental prompting principles, including priming (assigning roles) and shot prompting (giving examples) to guide LLMs effectively.
3. Knowledge Alchemy: Using Perplexity AI as a research companion and NotebookLM as a knowledge synthesizer, I grounded the biblical story of Joseph in modern Britain, ensuring the retelling remained inclusive and Progressive Christian.
4. Narrative Modernization: Through Matt’s “Quest” approach, I began to chain tools together (not always effectively) using the structured output from one AI as the input for another to transform the ancient text into a modern fable featuring a non-binary protagonist.
5. Visual Iteration: I  began to dive into image generation, learning to distinguish between “AI Art” and mass-produced “AI Slop” and began experimenting with Midjourney to find the visual soul of the modern Joseph.
6. Sonic Architecture: Shifting to audio, I  began to experiment with Suno to compose a building, hopeful emotional underscore that reflected Joseph’s redemption arc. I started by creating songs and jingles of personal interest before ‘prompting’ music for the exhibition.
7. Vocal Synthesis: Using ElevenLabs, I began to develop the knowledge which would lead to the generation of the audiobook narration. And, I investigated the range of synthetic voices to ensure the delivery was warm and authentic enough to carry the weight of a 10-minute story (which was later reduced to 4 minutes).
8. Addressing Pitfalls – The Pivot: A major pitfall emerged: the difficulty of maintaining perfect consistency in AI video generation and my inability to understand Adobe Premiere Pro meant that I had to abandon the idea of creating a video for the exhibition. Additionally, I encountered the AI’s poor proofreading, where text in images often appeared misspelled despite explicit instructions. These challenges led to a creative pivot, focusing on a high-quality narrated audiobook and visual presentation rather than a full animated film.
9. Agentic Automation: I explored AI Agents (like n8n and Replit) to see how multi-step workflows could eventually be automated, allowing for more rapid creative iterations in future projects but felt I did not have enough knowledge here to incorporate the use of Agents into the exhibition pieces.
10. Final Exhibition Prep: I finalised my Station Card, including a QR code linking to my “The Old Times” process blog, and planned the logistics for a 3–5 minute “meaningful encounter” for visitors. I decided that I wanted to create an holistic exhibition and decided to incorporate materials which complemented the subject matter and created a link to the well-known musical ‘Joseph and His Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat’. I did this by wearing a rainbow jacket, using a similar design of table cloth and offering muli-coloured ‘Skittles’ to guests. In addition, I had received hard copies of my booklet ‘Out in the Light: Queer Meditations for Advent’ which was inspired by this module to demonstrate the breadth of my learning during this module.
11. The Exhibition (Week 12): Delivered in an “Artist Salon” format, my final production was presented as a PowerPoint video which showcased the diverse iterations of Joseph, set against the Suno-generated score and the ElevenLabs audiobook narration, completing the digital pilgrimage.

While I initially felt ill-equipped for digital tools in other modules, this module’s cognitive scaffolding provided the support needed to offload complex technical tasks and focus on higher-level systems design. The only regret was the time constraint; the depth and excitement of the module left me wishing for more than two hours each week to explore these “dreaming machines.”

What I would do differently: Another time, I might spend longer experimenting with Agentic Systems earlier in the process to automate the proofreading and iteration cycles that remained a manual hurdle during this project. Analogy for the Module: This course has been like learning to garden in a dreamscape. Matt’s steps provided the tools and the fence, but the AI provided the wild, unpredictable seeds. I felt I was able not just to plant them; but to curate the garden, choosing which “flowers” of machine intelligence were authentic enough to represent the human heart. I love this!

Image: The video showing the use of AI tools at various stages and iterations of the story with background music created in Suno.

The Audiobook: Joseph and His Amazing Electric Dreams: A Modern Story of Dreams and Forgiveness

Image: An early AI image of Joseph generated using Midjourney