Monday 21 April 2008

The Stages of Sleep

On average people experience 5 stages of sleep each night. This means that they slip in and out of R.E.M. mode around 5 times and can potentially have 5 different dreams each night. Therefore, based on this information, I propose to create 5 different scenes within the piece, which correspond to the 5 stages of sleep.

Each scene will have different options for the user to explore. By selecting an option in each scene the user will have the ability to change certain areas of the narrative and eventually, will either be returned to the current scene, or passed to the next. I would like the piece to be simple and straightforward to use with no instruction needed. I will use subtle animation to move between scenes and within the options so as not to bombard the user with too much movement.

There are a few films which I have really enjoyed which deal with the subject of dreams and sleep and these might be good to refer back to, as they could potentially give me inspiration for the content of the scenes I will create within the piece.

The first is Waking Life:



And the next is The Science of Sleep which is directed by Michel Gondry, one of my favourite directors:

2 comments:

JG O'Donoghue said...

Hey Lucy, the following things might be of use to you in your surrealist Ideas:

A good surrealist art forum
http://surrealartforum.com/

Movies by Ingmar Bergman

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ingmar_Bergman

The only one I have seen of his:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Seventh_Seal

And Luis Buñuel

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Luis_Bu%C3%B1uel

And the only one I have seen of his is:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Un_Chien_Andalou

Hope it helps

Lucinda Bouton said...

hello there,
psychoanalyst Carl Jung wrote extensively on dreams. He believed they are symbolic representations of our unconscious (individual and collective)
I'd recommend looking into his book 'memories, dreams and reflections'