Istikhara Dream Cycle is an endless conversation held between two entities, the Dreamer and the Interpreter of Dreams. Their discourse is formed through a generative language model trained on the English translation of Ibn Sirin’s 7th century oneiric manual, The Interpretation of Dreams. Through a series of questions and answers, the Dreamer poses increasingly challenging and self-implicating questions, seeking guidance to navigate the moral and spiritual complexities of modern life. The Dreamer’s constant desire for truth pushes the conceptual and formal boundaries of Istikhara dream divination beyond its traditional limits. The dialogue unfolds as the Dreamer passes through a series of vibrant reveries developed using a separate generative interpretation of the artist’s own work. The answer to each question manifests in two forms. While the diviner speaks the reading, it also reveals itself visually in an ideogrammatic form, a totemic symbol that blends Arabic, Bangla, and Latin letterforms.

About the Filmmaker

Sadia Quddus is a media artist and designer based in Los Angeles, California. Her work investigates entangled relationships between the corporeal, virtual, and territorial body through the lens of Islamic belief systems and the infrastructure of Empire.Sadia’s practice subverts hierarchies of visibility through the manipulation of image surfaces and physical space. She enmeshes body, landscape, technology, and ritual in physical and digital objects. Her current research explores technologies of surveillance and data-capture, terrestrial politics, military ontologies, and cyber-mysticism, all in the conceptual framework of the “image body.” Sadia holds an MFA in Graphic Design from the Rhode Island School of Design (RISD), and is currently pursuing her MFA in Media Art at UCLA Design | Media Arts (DMA). She is a 2025 Supercollider SciArt Ambassador.