Android Dream by EL Putnam

Generative Animation (video).

Since becoming a mother, I have struggled with sleep deprivation. Lack of sleep has a profound impact, physically and mentally, including an ongoing state of general fatigue and sensation of being ground down amidst the pressures affiliated with maternal responsibilities. Android Dream is a generative animation where the image changes, colours schemes and opacity, and the soundtrack are created based on a month’s worth of sleep data collected by my Fitbit. A month is selected randomly from the present back to April 2020, when the impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic and subsequent public health restrictions were becoming manifest in the body. The photographic images and colours change in relation to the sleep level (awake, light, deep, and REM), with the opacities mapped to the duration of sleep at that level. The sound frequencies relate to level of sleep and the volume corresponding to the duration. This work is not just visualisations and sonifications of data, but treats the body as the database of lived experience. Therefore, Android Dream functions as a performance documentation; a divergent means of presenting the combined pressures of sleep deprivation and maternal responsibilities during the pandemic. 

Please note that this is a video version of the work. The generative version can be found here.

Read more about EL Putnam.