Colourblind artist Luke Jerram's Dream Director arrives in Bexhill next week. Picture courtesy Watershed
Preview: Dream Director, De La Warr Pavilion, Bexhill-on-Sea, April 3 - 5 2009 and Compton Verney, Warwickshire, May 26 - 29 2009.
In a career of astonishing art, Luke Jerram has been known to cast celestial music from hot air balloons at dawn and build objects using retinal afterimages, where viewers witness optical illusions by concentrating on sequential images.
In his latest installation, at Bexhill's De La Warr Pavilion, the colourblind artist who sees "everything as an experiment" uses sound to affect the content of people's dreams.
The idea for the sleep-based Dream Director came from a trip to the Sahara Desert, when the artist was woken by minarets calling people to prayer from around the town.
"It lifted me into that space on the edge of sleep, the very kind of creative illogical space where you're not sure if you're awake or asleep," he explains. "The sounds seemed to paint images in my imagination – this big map of the town seemed to open up in my head. It was another curious perceptual location in which you could consider making artwork."
"Traditionally you'd make a sculpture and then go and look at it, but the experience of that artwork fundamentally is a terrible one because you can't touch it. So why not make it within the person to begin with?"
Music has been a feature of his work for some time, and the Dream Director soundscapes were developed with composer Dan Jones. Jerram began by testing the effect of 100 random sounds on himself as he slept, “being woken up by a typewriter, followed by a train, followed by the seaside” – an “exhausting” experience.
People attending his overnight events are given cocoa, then lie down in separate pods wearing eye masks. These sense when REM sleep begins, and begin to play gentle soundscapes based around water, forests, or Jerram’s personal favourite, large echoic sounds such as the inside of canyons and cathedrals.
“The dreams I really like are the dreams where you’re not confined in a small space but actually you can see for miles, and you’re part of a very large landscape,” he enthuses. “So the idea is to promote this sense of space around someone in their dream.”
He claims that nobody has been given nightmares by the Dream Director, and in fact has noticed a significant reduction in the percentage of anxiety-based dreams his sleepers experience. “65% of ordinary dreams are full of anxiety anyway – you could be being chased, or you’re trying to run away from something, or you’re falling, or your fingernails are falling off.” He is quick to add, however, that this may or may not be a good thing, as there may be psychological reasons for these dreams.
Jerram says the project lifted him into a "creative illogical space". Picture courtesy Watershed
He believes his work could help people suffering from recurring nightmares by using certain sounds at the right time. "There's a potential that we could redirect the narrative of that dream as it's occurring, but we've got a long way to go," he says, adding a note of caution.
"We need to be quite careful - but art's very much like that anyway, it comes with a level of social responsibility." His self-imposed ethical standards will be enforced by sleep psychologists from the University of the West of England, who have issued him with a list of ill-advised sounds ("the sound of a house burning down wouldn't do anyone's dreams any good.")
Jerram is an artist who succeeds through keeping his work broadly accessible and fresh. "A child will appreciate it, my grandmother will appreciate it, but it'll also be valued from an academic perspective, whether you’re an artist or a scientist or whatever,” he asserts, having enjoyed the success of Play Me, I'm Yours, his touring installation which saw 300,000 Australians tinkle the ivories of 30 outdoor pianos in Sydney.
“You’d be lucky to get that kind of audience into a museum or gallery in that time," he observes, recalling the three-week scheme. "I quite like making artwork and actually delivering it directly to the public.
"Often a museum will say that they want to be reaching certain audiences or key sections of society, but more often than not they fail to do that, and they're just preaching to the converted and reaching the same audience. I quite like the idea of just delivering artwork and creative projects directly to the public for them to engage with."
"It's about providing access and an opportunity for everyone else's creativity to flow, and transforming a public space and connecting strangers."
300,000 members of the public took part in Jerram's Play Me, I'm Yours project. Picture courtesy Watershed
The instruments will hit the streets of London later this year, although they are unlikely to capture the revelatory inspiration they achieved in Sao Paolo, where visitors travelled from hundreds of miles away to try their hand.
One cleaner who had spent four years paying for her daughter to make a four-hour trip to take piano lessons finally got to hear the results through the installation. "She played for her mum and everyone else, and everyone was in tears - it was really lovely," says Jerram.
Inspired by an encounter with an Iranian well-digger who described the singing and howling of the wind blowing across 100-feet-deep desert wells, Jerram’s future plans include a hilltop pavilion that acts as an Aeolian harp, resonating and echoing with the wind. Meanwhile, his new book Art in Mind contains instructions so readers can try creating retinal afterimages for themselves.
For more details visit Luke Jerram’s homepage, the Dream Director website and Watershed online.
The Dream Director will visit the De La Warr Pavillion, Bexhill-on-Sea, April 3 - 5 2009 and Compton Verney, Warwickshire from May 26-29 2009.
