Sleeping and Dreaming

I found the energy to go out today :) to the Sleeping and Dreaming exhibition at the Wellcome Collection. Good stuff. I found myself knowing things already from my sleep research and felt clever. Yay! :)

I like Nils Klingers photography of movement during sleep, using a very very slow shutter speed. That's the bottom two pictures. See more here.

Also like the drawings of a dream. 'My Dream' by Sergei Pankejeff. A Freud patient who dreamed of wolves in a tree. Freud claimed this was to do with seeing his parents have sex and that he managed to cure 'the wolf man'. Apparantly he didn't cure him at all though. Says wiki.

I was intrigued by a print by Goya from Los Caprichos. Mmm creepy and old fashioned. That's the first image. I might get the book.

Discovered Mandrake roots are actually real...I though they were mythical plants...heh. What a fool :)

And I got pointed towards Kubla Khan by Coleridge. Which was apparantly written from a dream. Mmm description.

One of the information boards said something that interests me, apparantly recent research finds that individual sleeping conditions can bring not only loss of intimacy but can lead to serious sleeping disorders. (People didn't always have their own bed and special sleeping rooms) Aha! We aren't meant to sleep alone! I knew it :) I always found it very difficult to sleep before I was sleeping with Stu, and it's still difficult if he isn't there. Now there's apparantly scientific reasoning.

Ooh and I saw an advert for Fry's Pure Concentrated Cocoa from about 1880. It was a semi transparent print, of sleepy girl with eyes shut next to a tin of cocoa, but hold it to the light and it's a wide awake open eyed girl with a cup of cocoa :D That's kind of like what I've been working on, but cleverer.

On my way out I spotted interesting looking books in the shop. So I'm considering Angela Carter's Book of Fairy Tales, Sleepfaring by Jim Horne and the exhibition book Sleeping and Dreaming. Saw a lovely kids book - Not a Box by Antoinette Portis :D about a rabbit playing in a box and pretending it's all sorts of things and definitely NOT a box :D

I actually left the house intending to buy a dress but I hated ALL the clothes. Stupid shopping. Yay Sleeping and Dreaming.