1993 – Slumber: Brainwave Weaving

Slumber was a multi-year gallery installation/performance by artist Janine Antoni. From the website description: Performance with loom, yarn, bed, nightgown, EEG Machine and artist’s REM reading. Antoni transforms the fleeting act of dreaming into a sculptural process. Between 1994 and 2000, the artist slept in the bed while an electroencephalograph machine recorded her eye movement. During the day, Antoni would sit at the loom and weave shreds of her nightgown in the pattern of her REM. The patterns were woven into the blanket that covered the artist as she slept at night. In developing Slumber, the artist researched dreams from the vantage of mythology, art history, psychoanalysis, and science. Through her performance, she uses mythology to reinterpret the scientific. As Antoni discusses – “Science had made a machine for the body to make a drawing. I love the idea that if art comes from the unconscious, then this particular drawing is coming straight from the unconscious onto the page without an intercession of the conscious mind.” Source: http://www.janineantoni.net/slumber/