The room is darkened. Along the walls of this hushed space in Bristol are 20
sleep pods in two rows, each with a neat airbed emerging from its silver
head. We are about to let Luke Jerram, an installation artist with an
interest in science, attempt to direct our dreams as part of a trial run for
a public event called the Dream Director Sleepover later this month.
At one end of the room stands a desk with a mass of wires, on which sits
“Bertha”, the computer that Jerram will use to control the proceedings. The
atmosphere is more space-age spa than science lab. The 20 of us stand a
little awkwardly for a moment then, like kids at camp, we throw our sleeping
bags down on our chosen pods.
The pods are part of Jerram’s new Dream Director experiment at the Arnolfini
Gallery, in which participants are played sounds during the night to see how
these affect their dreams. When we hear horses, will we dream about horses?
Or might the sounds affect our dreams in more subtle ways? The idea came to
Jerram when he was staying in a desert town in the Middle East. Early in the
morning the call to prayer started from the town’s minarets. “I was lifted
into that space on the edge of sleep,” he says. “First one minaret started
on the far side of town, then another on the opposite side, followed by more
around the town. The layers of sound built up creating a sound map of the
town in my head. It was a beautiful experience.” Jerram has already tried to
influence an entire city’s slumber. A chance meeting with a hot-air
balloonist led to the Sky Orchestra: seven hot-air balloons carrying
loudspeakers that play music as they fly over people’s homes – most recently
in Sydney – in the early morning, delivering to the semi-somnolent residents
what Jerram hopes is “a sculptural, visual experience through sound”.
Many of our dreams involve threats
Jerram followed that up with a couple of “sleep concerts”, run in conjunction
with sleep scientists at Bristol’s University of Western England (UWE), in
which up to 120 people slept in one room to an intermittent and varied
soundtrack. The great majority of people at the concerts reported pleasant
dreams, which is far from normal, says Dr Chris Alford, a UWE sleep
scientist. About two thirds of dreams are usually anxiety-ridden, he says,
with many involving a threat of some kind. At the sleep concerts, there was
evidence of people incorporating the sounds they heard into their dreams,
Jerram says. To take the research farther, Jerram, with the help of a Clark
bursary (for digital arts) and the UWE scientists, set about designing the
Dream Director, which allows a more individual experience of the dream
experiment. He and his team hope that it might one day prove useful for
helping traumatised people who have recurrent nightmares. For the moment,
though, my fellow guinea- pigs and I are about to try the Dream Director.
I climb into my sleeping bag and settle my head into the pod. I like it in
here. It is cosy without being claustrophobic, private but not isolated. The
walls are padded with soundproof foam and subtly placed speakers. A sleep
mask hangs from a wire. It is like the ones that you get on aircraft, only
with a small circuit board over one eye. This is an infra-red sensor that
detects when your eyes are moving, telling the Dream Director that you are
in rapid eye movement (REM) – or dreaming – sleep. Bertha is thereby
informed that you are ripe for dream direction and a sound is sent to your
pod.
In early trials, the team found that having a wide range of sounds left the
sleeper exhausted, so now each pod is themed. I put on my mask and make
myself comfortable to listen to a lullaby by the composer Dan Jones that
begins the night. Jones’s wonderfully relaxing collection of sound and music
is like an auditory massage that stimulates images in your head. The more
figurative sounds conjure pleasant pictures before I drift off into the
abstract.
The dreams of participants in Dream Director events will be analysed by
Jennifer Parker, one of the few scientifically respectable dream researchers
in the UK and a lecturer at UWE. Traditional dream analysis looks at what
happens in dreams and especially at recurring events, says Parker. But her
research suggests that we should focus more on how particular emotions
recur, even within different storylines. She says: “I believe that one of
the functions of dreams may be to deal with our emotions in a way that we
can’t during the day.”
Women dream of sex with people they know
Men and women dream differently, too, adds Parker – and quite stereotypically.
Research in America, and her own work with British students, has found that
men’s dreams are more physical, more aggressive, more about other men, and
any sexual content often involves a stranger. Women dream more of verbal
than physical abuse, more about family members, have more indoor settings,
and sex tends to involve known individuals. Above all, Parker has found that
women’s dreams contain more emotion – especially negative emotion – and can
be more psychologically disturbing, leaving a greater residue on waking.
We in the pods are woken by the Dream Director’s “wake-aby” and gather in a
nearby café to eat breakfast and chew over the night’s events. Despite being
beautifully lulled by the lullaby, I didn’t sleep very well. I think I must
have been worrying subconsciously about recalling my dreams because when I
did finally dream it was of waking up in my pod, getting up with all the
others and explaining that I hadn’t heard anything or dreamt anything!
Pod 4 listened to forest sounds
I went on to dream of going into a shop to collect a piece of clothing that I
had ordered and having to admit that I had ordered it ages ago and forgotten
to come in for it. Another of the participants had had a very similar “false
waking” – also to dream of himself saying that he hadn’t dreamt.
Discussion becomes animated: Pod 4, who has been played forest sounds, says:
“I did dream of forests, but what worries me is the Polish crucifix I was
carrying over my shoulder.” Pod 9’s watery soundbites came together as a
beach, but he also dreamt “lots of weird stuff”, while Pod 10 (forests
again) heard bird-song and helped a burns victim. Pod 15 recounts his dream
of discovering a huge forest hidden under the Thames outside Tate Modern,
apparently built by Ken Livingstone in the 1970s and then forgotten by all.
This dream – and its dreamer – began a heated (and friendly) debate about
whether you can create art in the subconscious, in Jerram’s “space between
waking and sleep”. Had I experienced art? During the lullaby, possibly, yes.
During the night, no. And was it science? Not strictly, but with careful
analysis of the results it may well have a contribution to make. Was it an
interesting experience? Yes, it certainly was.
To take part in the Dream Director Sleepover (£5) at the Arnolfini gallery,
Bristol, July 21, call 0117-917 2300. For Dream Director events, visit
www.dshed.net/clarkbursary or www.lukejerram.com
Still lost in the land of nod Despite a gamut of brain studies about why we
dream, experts are as divided as ever
Freudian sleep
Sigmund Freud argued that dreams could be interpreted to reveal hidden
desires, but many scientists disagree with that psychological approach. We
do know that when dreaming is at its peak, the brain is highly aroused –
rapid eye movement (REM) sleep.
Brain waves
Perhaps dreams are the way our sleeping brain keeps consciousness ticking
over, says Professor G. William Domhoff, a psychologist at California
University, Santa Cruz. His study of thousands of dreams suggest the brain
may be creating dreams the way it creates waking thoughts. “The brain’s goal
is to construct a reasonable image of the world. When it’s not receiving any
information, it starts to invent.”
Fears and tears
Antti Revonsuo, of Finland’s Turku University, agues that dreams prime us for
danger. He says that from the thousands of scientific records of dreams: 80
per cent are scary. “We know the environment our ancestors lived in was full
of threats. These dreams simulate the most dangerous threat, to prepare us
for such situations in real life.”
Nocturnal filing
Other scientists suggest that dreams may be our nocturnal filing clerks,
consolidating memories. Matthew Wilson, of the Picower Institute for
Learning and Memory, Massachusetts, has studied how rats dream. He says
electrical patterns formed in their hippocampuses as they navigate a new
maze are rerun in REM sleep.
Dream delirium
Professor J. Allan Hobson, a Harvard Medical School psychiatrist, believes
that while dreaming, people have similar brain chemistry to those having
psychotic episodes. Little wonder dreams seem weird, he says. Dreaming is
delirium; psychosis, but a healthy one.
