NEWS_
The Dream Director Exhibition - Luke Jerram_
Date 5th November 2008
Tags event, international, exhibition, UK
Luke Jerram's The Dream Director is a unique art event, installation and exploration investigating the hidden realm of dreaming.
Where do people go when they dream? What do they see? What do they experience? And can the shape of dreams be influenced as the dreamer is sleeping? These are the questions posed and explored by artist Luke Jerram in his participatory work, The Dream Director.
Jerram was commissioned in 2007 by Watershed through the Clark Bursary, the UK Digital Art Award, to investigate the complexities of sleep and dreaming. He built upon original research carried out with sleep psychologist Chris Alford at The University of West of England, to create a new installation that merges art, science and digital media.
The Dream Director invites people to sleep overnight in a gallery. Specially designed "pods" house the dreamers who don eye-masks that detect rapid eye movement, indicating the dreaming stage of sleep. Each pod is allocated a different bank of sounds, shaping participants dreams in different ways.
When the dreamers reach their dream state, their eye masks trigger ambient sounds via a computer, which are played into small speakers mounted into the pod, in an attempt to affect the nature and content of their dreams.
Prior to the sleepover, participants are asked to record what sort of dreams they normally experience. After the sleepover they are asked to record their dreaming experience for that night.
The Dream Director explores the boundaries of participants' conscious and subconscious minds, prompting questions about the ethics of and possibilities for, creating art in dream space. It is also a new tool for sleep science and clinical applications that raises questions about the rules of interaction and boundaries of science and art.
"An innovative and aesthetically beautiful piece of work, which completely encompasses the viewer, fulfilling the main and crucial artistic aim, whilst spanning the realms of science and engineering, very entertaining and exciting."
Previous participant in The Dream Director
Watershed is delighted to announce that The Dream Director is to embark on a national tour, visiting ICA (London), FACT (Liverpool) and De La Warr Pavilion (Bexhill-on-Sea) where a wider audience will be able to participate in future sleepovers.
Aside from the actual participation in the event as a dreamer, day-time visitors are able to visit a newly designed installation based on the sleepover of the previous night and access documentation about the Dream Director's development including written information, images, film and audio.
Websites
