Deep Sleep prints

Visualising sleep

We spend a third of our lives asleep and during that time – with the exception of transient periods of wakefulness and recalled dreaming – we are completely unaware of ourselves and our surroundings. Deep sleep is an experience of nothingness but one that is full of fundamental but hidden activity. Sleep presents scientists, who deal in objective, repeatable facts, with a huge problem. Not only is being asleep a solitary act, even the person sleeping cannot give an account of it. What happens to the ‘self’ in this dark time of sleep when we are unconscious but the brain is in a state of high function? Finding ways to make the invisible visible is an exciting challenge for an artist.

What happens to the self in this time of deep sleep?