"Swaddled Baby", Ron Mueck, 2002, pg. 133
I particularly like this image because I was swaddled as a baby and as a result I now have sleep behavior where i need to have my doona, no matter what weather, and position it to go over my shoulders and ear but under my chin with only my head poking out. I guess this is me trying to replicate being swaddled.
Still from "Un Chein Andalon", Luis Brunel and Salvador Dali, 1929, pg. 13
I first saw this Surrealist film at last winter's Dali exhibition at the NGV International to which my initial reaction was of confusion. When researching further, Surrealism's link to the mind and dreams was one that seemed to help the work make more sense. The Paranoic Critical method used by the Surrealists is one that can only be percieved by the mind and is in a way like a dream, by reinterpreting the already known but in illogical ways.
"Representation of the Sleeping Brain", Rene Descarte, 1664, pg. 23
This woodcut of a mechanical study of the brain denotes areas that are said to switch on or off during sleep. It shows the nerves and how they no longer react to the outside world during sleep, "Therefore man can neither feel any sensations nor move his extremities."
"The Dream Recorder", Science and Invention cover #5, September 1926, pg. 37
This illustration depicts the desire of the time to be able to record dreams by means of measuring heartbeats and breathing accelerations. Today sleep centers still use similar methods along with video evidence.
"Auf Zeit", Raffael Rheinsberg, 1995, pg. 74
This brass and steel installation of clockworks components relating to the human condition around time. "From afar it resembles a sparkling, endless cosmos. Close to it suggests the impossibility of grasping or measuring time."
don't listen to descarte and his modernist dribble and ontological ramblings!!! :P
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