Wide Asleep: Interactive video installation, immersive soundscape
‘Wide Asleep’ is an interactive installation describing a personal perspective on the transitional state between wakefulness and sleep.
Using creative coding and projection mapping, the viewer is taken on an audio-visual journey into the mind of the Artist at night. During this experience, the viewer’s endurance is tested as their amount of interactivity is recorded and their finger tapping is directly processed to affect the way in which the video installation is controlled.
Living with sleeping problems
Ever since I can remember, I have suffered with insomnia and have always had great difficulty in ‘calming down’ my over active mind and anxiety. As a result of this when trying to fall asleep, I have experienced temporary paralysis, where I feel as though I am unable to move my body as well as the onset of intense audio and visual migraines. Up until recently, I was unsure if anyone had gone through something similar. However, after researching into my symptoms further, I found a term describing what I experience known as ‘Hypnogogia’.
Both ‘Hypnogogia’ and ‘Sleep Paralysis’ refer to the experiences that a person has when they are in the transitional state between wakefulness and sleep.
‘Hypnagogic’ relates to the conscious state the mind is in immediately before falling asleep, whereas ‘Sleep paralysis’ is a feeling of being conscious but unable to move. During the occurrence of these phases, people often have varying ‘mental phenomena’ whereby they can experience lucid thought, lucid dreaming and lucid hallucinations.
When trying to describe how this feels, I have always struggled to explain the intensity of the sensations felt in my body and the vividness of what I see and hear. Before entering sleep, I will often experience bouts of sleep paralysis, followed by seeing flashes of light and of hearing different frequencies of static noise, that appear to layer one another. When my sleeping problems are at their worst (my mind feels fully awake, whilst my body is numb), I focus on concentrating all of my energy into moving my fingertips so that I can break the cycles of sleep paralysis.
I almost have to wake myself up to be able to fall asleep.
Acknowledgements
Sound design: Samuel Organ - soundcloud.com/samuelorgan
Camera / Editor: Leonardo Lami - leonardolami.com
Materials
Visuals: Illustrator
Animation: After Effects
Coding: Arduino / Processing3
3D mapping software: Millumin2
Plinth Structure: MDF / Lasercut acrylic
Installation Set up: Custom MDF wall structures / Long throw projectors