Discipula's fake ad campaign for dream-reading tech is a public performance

The Italian artist collective Discipula, founded in 2013 by MFG Paltrinieri, Mirko Smerdel, and Tommaso Tanini, staged a public intervention in Milan from November 27 to December 10, 2017, titled Outdoor Media Action. The project, part of a larger series called "How Things Dream," explored the relationship between technology, free market, and new forms of control. In collaboration with M4, the company building Milan's new metro line, Discipula placed six screens in crowded areas of the city. The screens broadcast advertisements for a fictional tech company named AURA, promoting a fake technology called Morpheus that could visualize users' dreams. The campaign was meticulously crafted to appear real, including articles in marketing magazines. After the first week, the collective revealed it was an experiment to investigate how audiences perceive advertising messages and whether they accept them as real. The project also includes an online questionnaire at www.into-aura.com, where participants describe their last or most recurring dream and answer multiple-choice questions about their desire for such dream-visualizing technology. Responses will form an archive of real contributions that Discipula will use for future works.