Event Blog 4: Extra Credit

Me at the opening of Hypnagogia exhibit

For my fourth/extra credit event, I attended the gallery opening of Hypnagogia, an exhibit by artist Chelly Jin. Chelly describes Hypnagogia as the “liminal state between consciousness and dream” (Jin). The exhibit was set up interestingly. You entered through thin, white chiffon curtains. Inside the room, there were paper lanterns clustered on the ceiling while white boards lined the walls. These boards had many of Chelly dreams transcribed on them. Chelly’s voice was calmingly piping through the speakers in the room. She was reading some of her dreams. There was also a picture of Chelly projected onto one of the walls. 

Image of Chelly projected onto the wall with paper lanterns in the foreground

Chelly’s work is related to Neuroscience and art unit discussed in class. Chelly did not use the medical imaging technology to record her brain’s activities during sleep/dream states. However, she recorded her actual dreams, which tell beautiful stories and show just complex the brain can be. All of the dreams that Chelly had transcribed had a logical plot or expressed a very real emotion. This just goes to show what our brains are capable of creating when they’re in an “unconscious” state. Although, we do not truly understand why or how we dream, Chelly’s work shows that dreams can be related to our current state of mind.

For example, in the dream titled “Second Universe,” Chelly talks about a little girl from a dysfunctional family “who hated everything.” The girl switched universes and met a man who yelled at her, thus scaring her. The man tells the girl about how he lost everyone he loved in the real world because time passed slower in the second universe. The man had tried to scare her away to ensure that she would not return to second universe and lose everything she had. The little girl agrees to go back and finds that her family hates her even more and returns to second universe. She decides to stay in the second universe and be with the man because she is a “fearless one.” Next to the story, Chelly emotions on a scale of 0 to 1. I agreed with her ratings because as I was reading this piece I felt those exact emotions especially at the end where the girl and the man are described as being lonely. Chelly rates sadness at 0.954, which I wholeheartedly agree with.  

Second Universe poster

While I enjoyed the exhibit and being in a room with a calm soothing voice describing the dreams, I think this exhibit could have tied Neuroscience and art more by including brainwaves taken using during some of the dreams. She could have used electroencephalogram (EEG) to measure the electrical activity of the brain (Westminster College). It would be really interesting to see how the brain reacts to certain “plot twists” in the dreams and to what Chelly is feeling. She also could have gone a step further and taken brain waves of herself when she is awake and exposed to the same feelings that she describes in the dreams. This would have been an interesting comparison and could show that, as predicted by Brown University researchers, our brains truly feel that they are experiencing their dreams as if they are real life (Ghose). Or perhaps it would show the opposite.

Bibliography

Ghose, Tia. Reading Your Dreams: Brain Wave Activity Reveals Dream Imagery. 4 April 2013. Web. 6 June 2018. https://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/04/04/reading-dreams-scans_n_3016895.html.

Jin, Chelly. "Hypnagogia." Los Angeles, 21 May 2018.

Westminster College. The Measurement of Brain Waves. n.d. Web. 6 June 2018. http://www.psych.westminster.edu/psybio/BN/Labs/Brainwaves.htm.