'Personally, I enjoy working about 18 hours a day.'
Thomas Edison.
What?
- a series of fake advertising campaigns about productivity + sleep...
one along the lines of the marketing style 'excel in bed', another a series that details the success of famous non-sleepers and finally a 'public information' official-looking goldsmiths one (for example: 'The college recommends that students average 5 hours of sleep a night. Recent studies have shown that this allows for maximum productivity. Time spent sleeping is time not revising!').
- a video that documents our thinking on the topic, outlining theory, footage of the posters around university, and the links between 'high flyers' and their sleeping habits (me and Aldo thought this might just be a nice way to 'round off' the course, a good final post on the blog that will look better than a textual write-up!)
- we also mentioned staging a slightly more interactive, sort of public platform or public discussion, where we might be able to show our video, maybe even get some people to deliver talks?? (we'll have to see if this would require too much organisation...)
- any other ideas welcome, not sure if this is enough work for 7 of us, or too 'safe'?
Goya's Sleep of Reason
Where?
- around campus - particularly good timing what with exams coming up. and many recent news articles about academics struggling to keep their work from over taking every area of their life:
http://www.theguardian.com/higher-education-network/blog/2014/mar/01/mental-health-issue-phd-research-university
How?
We'll need to divide up tasks between group members:
as Karishma is in Bangladesh, we thought she could do some research in to famous people that function on little sleep. 'poster boys/girls' for productivity, if you like. perhaps similar to 'top trump' cards? Someone could then design the posters from her information. That leaves five of us. one or two people to make the video, and then the other pairs for the other posters?
- each person could also pick some theoretical reading for every week , so that our blog will have a nice write-up on a few key texts for us all to pick quotes from for our essays?
- as well as this, any sort of poetry/literature/art works/films that people are aware of that deal with the topic would be great to post - to 'enrich' our idea a bit and maybe even spark off more creative ways of approaching this intervention?
- I also really liked the links Bernadette has been commenting with, particularly this piece by Joseph Grigley:
could we ask lots of people to describe their experience with sleep/what it means to them... and then display it?
Why?
we've already covered a fair amount of theory (cyborgs/assemblages etc) as well as Jonathan Crary's 24/7
Sleep has to be one of the final frontiers of 'wasted time' for capitalism to conquer. If we take for example, Marx's comment that modernity means 'all that is solid melts in to air': we already see distinctions between politically left/right disintegrate, the traditional family unit breaking down, is the distinction between day and night the next step? Where does this leave us?
I also think this links with 'the invisible' in a number of ways. For example, James Elkins and his theory of vision being cousin to blindness - in a world where we close our eyes less and less, what effect is this having on what we take in?
Technology's effect on our sleep is largely invisible in the sense that people think nothing of going to bed with ipads/laptops etc, but we're yet to see where this will take us (Jonathan Crary suggests we'll all need to buy sleeping pills, hence the commodification of what was once a purely natural thing)
What so fascinates artists about sleep?
Sam Taylor-Wood's David
P.S. a quick search has thrown up some really interesting sleep-related stuff:
http://www.ted.com/talks/russell_foster_why_do_we_sleep
http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB10001424052748703712504576242701752957910
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-22084671
Leah also mentioned the extent to which the pace of life in cities might depend upon caffeine, so this would be another interesting area for enquiry.
I'd urge everyone to also have a look at the links Aldo posted too - the head of Lloyds got a £1.7m bonus last year! he may be an extreme example but are we all finding it harder to 'switch off'?
Can everyone aside from Aldo and Karishma make a meeting on Friday at 12? NAB Cafe again? we can talk more fully about who is going to do what, and if everyone is happy with what me and Aldo have discussed! Please leave a comment, thanks.
Oh, and I realise that some people might feel like they haven't had much of a say in where our project seems to be going... so I should probably just clarify that this is just what me and Aldo discussed, it is by no means definitely what we'll end up doing (unless everyone likes it, that is) Hopefully see you all on Friday!
ReplyDeleteHey, I really like the plans here. I don't think that it's too safe at all. I also think we should remember what Bernadette said- to not focus too much on what intervention means. To just go for it. Which is, at this stage, something we need to do.
ReplyDeleteI would write more, but we can discuss on Friday.
Thanks Cain for writing everything up for us! It seems that things are going really nicely for our group, cool! I like the sleep idea and doing posters, but I am not so sure about the the "Goldsmiths recommends:.." part, it feels that it could easily come a bit to close to an ironic-student-p*ss take!..
ReplyDeleteI was riding on the tube recently and there was this ad for a product which was targeting fatigue, and that got me thinking that nobody would think of advertising a product which would actually eliminate our need to sleep, because they are drugs.
I thought that maybe we could invent a product that would stop people from needing sleep without side effects? A bit like a weight loss product, but for sleep. Then I've remembered that such drug actually exists more or less, it is called Modafinil and tremendously popular as a smart drug, so I did not really invent the wheel here, but maybe some kind of supplement that reduces your need for sleep? So "no need to sleep for 7, 8h, but 4 is enough'
Maybe we could work into this direction? Creating posters for invented imaginary products that resemble what already is on the market, but take the whole thing to a subtly odd/crazy level. Or make odd public health announcements, like the one about sleep, but I do think that doing it about goldsmiths seems a little bit too sarcastic/ not political enough...