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Histories of Dreams and Dreaming pp 219–245Cite as

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The Sleepless Dream: Movement in Twentieth-Century Observation-Based Dream Research

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Abstract

From the perspective of cultural history, “sleep” and “dreaming” can be regarded as transformative objects, rather than discrete phenomena. The contribution aims to present these transformations to be closely entangled with means of representation.

Within the twentieth century, the representation of the sleeping body has been rooted in the application of time-based and apparatus-supported (objectifying) technologies. While sciences, arts, and mass media would thus appear to meet within a similar frame, divergent objects of sleep emerged: “Sleep as Movement” and “Sleep as Stillness.”

The effect on the “dream” might range from describing lucidity in sleep (research) to an increasing marginalization of dreaming in the arts and popular culture of the twentieth century.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    As reproduced in the publication “From Angels to Neurons” (Hobson and Wohl 2005, 97).

  2. 2.

    Doris Kaufmann (2000) has shown how civilian society in the age of enlightenment and revolutions had to take a position toward the dream as scientific object. In this contribution, sleep and dream will be approached as historical objects as well. Special attention is given to media, such as television and film, and their specificities, such as visual, acoustic, objectifying, or reproducible forms of representation. In reference to historic epistemology, this addresses the role of media as ensembles of techniques and methods that turn things into objects of knowledge (Rheinberger 2001) and shape psychological and physiological phenomena (Borck and Schäfer 2005).

  3. 3.

    On film as “dream screen” see Baudry (1975), on film and dream see, for example, (Petrić 1981; Koch 2002; Reck 2010; Brütsch 2010). For a perspective in the history of cinema and psychoanalysis see Marinelli (2006).

  4. 4.

    Supported by ZKM Center for Art and Media, Karlsruhe (Germany), the Academy of Media Arts Cologne (Germany), the Federal Ministry for Education, the Arts and Culture (Austria), the Ministry of Art and Science (Austria), and City of Vienna (Austria).

  5. 5.

    My gratitude to Cornelius Borck, Kenton Kroker, Nicolas Langlit, and Jennifer Windt for advice over the years and to “The International Association for the Study of Dreams” for supporting another filming session in 2011 (in Kerkrade, the Netherlands).

  6. 6.

    My gratitude for the collaboration with Ute Freud on the camera.

  7. 7.

    In the discussion on the media immanent in resemblance of death and photography (Ruby 1995; Sontag 2013). It should also be noted that the earliest criticism stems from a time that the experience of death as dying at home was still part of everyday life.

  8. 8.

    International annual exhibition “curated by” (Vienna). Guest curator 2014 Beatriz Colomina, edition title: “Century of the Bed” (Colomina et al. 2014). Exhibition space Galerie Mezzanin, curated by Sabeth Buchmann.

  9. 9.

    As a recent investigation on the cultures of sleep see, for example, Brunt and Steger (2008).

  10. 10.

    As Thomas Galifot pointed out in an interview at Musée d’Orsay, particularly in the beginnings of photography, when it was observed with skepticism, a photograph had been the only remembrance of a person.

  11. 11.

    The term “muscle tone” is often used in sleep science since an increase or decrease of muscle tone has been described as defining sleep states. Here it does not refer to the anatomic concept of muscles, which themselves might be regarded a cultural object (Kuriyama 2009), but a basic balance, which will later be aligned with “movement.”

  12. 12.

    From a horizontal perspective, the human silhouette and figure when lying on the side turned toward the observer offers a more complex view than that of a person lying on the back. Obviously, for that reason, the quantity of sleepers lying on the side, as in the example above, seeking balance by arms or legs, is exceeding.

  13. 13.

    The motif refers to Jacob’s journey to Haran and the dream at Bethel. Jacob stops at the place where he would have to spend the night, as the sun was setting, took a stone to put under his head, and dreamed of the ladder set up on the earth with the top reaching heaven, on which angels were ascending and descending. Then God spoke to him.

  14. 14.

    As reproduced in the exhibition catalog “La Renaissance et le Rêve” (The Musée d’Luxembourg 2013, 96).

  15. 15.

    As reproduced in the exhibition catalog “La Renaissance et le Rêve” (The Musée d’Luxembourg 2013, 95).

  16. 16.

    As reproduced in the exhibition catalog “La Renaissance et le Rêve” (The Musée d’Luxembourg 2013, 97).

  17. 17.

    The research on the exhibition “Sommeils Artificiel” was done in collaboration with the Musée d’Orsay in Paris. All images displayed at the exhibition can be found online in the database of the Musee d’Orsay: https://www.musee-orsay.fr/fr/collections/catalogue-des-oeuvres/recherche-simple.html

  18. 18.

    For “synchronization” as a cultural technique (Kassung and Macho 2013).

  19. 19.

    The term diegeses is used in film theory and has been closely investigated in montage a/v: “Die Diegese ist der Inhalt desmentalen Konstrukts, das der Rezipient im Zuge des Versuchs, eine Erzählung zu verstehen, anfertigt und das auch der Autor anfertigen muss, bevor er eine Erzählung zu Papier oder was auch immer bringen kann” (“As the content of a mental construct generated by the recipient within the aim to understand the narrative, or which the author has to generate before starting to draft the narrative on paper or wherever”) (Fuxjäger 2007, 18).

  20. 20.

    This view might be called “omniscient,” “god’s view,” or “third-person perspective.” The literary scholar Gérard Genette famously criticized the concept of a “third person” in that every narrative would be “in the first person,” as a narrator could at any moment be able to declare the self as “I” (Genette 1988, 101–102).

  21. 21.

    It was part of the series “Human and Animal Locomotion” (image: Muybridge, 1887).

  22. 22.

    On the history of sleep see (Williams 2005; Ahlheim 2013). On sleep and economy Crary (2013).

  23. 23.

    For example, (Hagner 2000, 2006).

  24. 24.

    For a philosophical discussion (Sauerwein 2011).

  25. 25.

    In one of the interviews conducted, Hobson formulated a requirement for science journalism to present an agenda by antagonizing it (to another), thereby providing one possible explanation on why sleep observation-based dream research is after all regarded in this genealogy.

  26. 26.

    On the general debate see encounters by (Solms 2000, 2004) and for a critical review, for example, Domhoff (2005). Regarding the reception in scientific literature see Harmon and Gross (2007).

  27. 27.

    https://wellcomecollection.org/exhibitions/sleeping-dreaming, viewed 1 December 2017.

  28. 28.

    An epistemic ideal of “objectivity” (Daston and Galison 2007) appears to be continued within cultures of observation and their practices: As works at the intersection of the history of psychiatry and the media have shown, the construction of the psyche oscillates between observable expressions and their representation (e.g., Didi-Huberman 2004; Holl 2005).

  29. 29.

    https://www.metmuseum.org/exhibitions/listings/2016/dream-states viewed 1 December 2017.

  30. 30.

    The naturalism included distancing from stylistic preferences of their immediate past and abandoning the concept of the master. The art critic of the time, Giovanni Pietro Bellori, famously asserted that Caravaggio therefore had no understanding of making artistic selections in favor of the various beauties of nature. The essay on the painter has been reprinted in the booklet accompanying the portrait film “Caravaggio” (Jarman 1986).

  31. 31.

    By now Caravaggio is assumed to have been using an apparatus to paint, a camera obscura.

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  1. Humboldt University of Berlin, Berlin, Germany

    Mina Lunzer

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  1. Sapienza University of Rome, Rome, Italy

    Giorgia Morgese

  2. Sapienza University of Rome, Rome, Italy

    Giovanni Pietro Lombardo

  3. Durham, NC, USA

    Hendrika Vande Kemp

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Lunzer, M. (2019). The Sleepless Dream: Movement in Twentieth-Century Observation-Based Dream Research. In: Morgese, G., Pietro Lombardo, G., Vande Kemp, H. (eds) Histories of Dreams and Dreaming. Palgrave Studies in the History of Science and Technology. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-16530-7_9

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