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.

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