Schedule

Sleep Neuro Lab Office Hours: You can join this zoom link with Dr. Michelle Carr weekly on Thursdays from 1:00-2:00pm ET. Email Dr. Carr @ mcarr4@u.rochester.edu

Engineering  Lab Office Hours: These are flexible based on need, and will become regular office hours when projects ramp up. For now email Eyal and Aby to set times. 

Project Brainstorming Time with Adam Weekly Tuesdays 2:00-3:00. You can sign up here.

  2.1.22: Introduction + Sleep Science

• Lecturers: Bob + Pattie + Adam + Michelle + Aby + Eyal (meeting everyone)
• Readings: For the first class, read the NYT piece Did Covid Change How We Dream?
  • • And read our short piece Towards Engineering Dreams 
• Zoom Recording: Here (we will get cleaner audio recording next time!)

  2.8.22: Dream Science

• Lecturers: Dr. Michelle Carr, Dario Robleto
• Readings: Dreaming and the Brain: from phenomenology to neurophysiology (Nir, Tononi 2010)
  • • And Unknown and Solitary Seas
    • Optional: Listen to an interview with Dario here
• Assignment: Capture a dream of yours. Consider carefully what it means to bring your dream into the material world, to remember it, to share it with others, in the context of these readings. Will you show us a waveform, a drawing, a sound or a stone? Be prepared to share your dream in class, if comfortable. Upload your assignment here (if it is not digital, document it in some way and upload documentation).
• Zoom Recording: Here

  2.15.22: Dream Incubation + N1

• Lecturers: Adam, Dr. Thomas Andrillon
• Readings: Sleep Onset Is A Creative Sweet Spot
  • • Dormio: A Targeted Dream Incubation Device
    • Incubation Overview: Dreams and Nightmare Laboratory
      • Optional: Watch Thomas speak about his research here.
• Assignment: Try the nap technique which is detailed in the Sleep Onset and Dormio papers above. If you’d like, you can do so simply by napping holding a heavy object in hand as Edison and Dalí did. Or you can use this simple website we have built which makes timing your sound stimulus and recording dream report audio easy. Try to nap on two separate days, in the period 1 hour after eating lunch, with an eye mask on. Write about your experience in light of the readings — any creative bursts in your nap?
• Submission Link Here
• Zoom link recording here

  2.22.22: Spring Break

• Rest up. Choose your lullaby carefully.
• On Feb. 25 there is an interesting talk on Sleep and Sound, for those of you interested in sonifying EEG data or making music for unconscious crowds: Register here

  3.1.22: Altering Memories In Sleep

• Lecturers: Dr. Bob Stickgold
• Readings: Sleeping in a Brave New World (Paller, 2017)
  • • Memory, Sleep and Dreaming: Experiencing Consolidation (Wamsley, Stickgold 2011)
    • And pick 1 of the following options:
      • • A New Vision for Dreams of the Dying
        • Olfactory Aversive Conditioning during Sleep Reduces Cigarette-Smoking Behavior (Arzi, 2014)
        • Memory and Sleep: How Sleep Cognition Can Change the Waking Mind for the Better (Paller, Creery 2021)
        • Watch Film: Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind
• Assignment: Sleep with the eucalyptus scent which has been brought to class. Smell it before sleeping. When you awaken in the morning, smell it again, silence your alarm for 10 minutes, sleep again. Write your dreams down, paying careful attention to links with the class setting. Are there elements of your dream that are related to class — emotions, characters, objects? Write about this experience in light of the readings
• OR create one slide with your idea for a system that could augment or support sleeping or dreaming. This can be high level and we will give feedback on whether it seems feasible with today’s technologies. This is building towards your final project.
• Submission Link Here
• Zoom Recording Here

  3.8.22: Implementing Sleep Science for Good

• Lecturers: Dr. Azizi Seixas 
• Readings: Implementation of Sleep and Circadian Science
  • • Deepening Sleep by Hypnotic Suggestion
    • Listen: Atlanta-Based Organization Advocates For Rest As A Form Of Social Justice
    • Suggested Activity(optional): If you’re interested in the stranger side of sleep interventions, here is the text which Professor Rasch used in his Hypnosis paper. Have a friend or text to speech algorithm playing it as you go to bed. Pay careful attention to changes in your perceived sleepiness and perceived depth of sleep upon awakening. Think about what Thomas Andrillon told us about sleepers’ capacity for processing sound in different sleep stages. If you would like to, you can borrow a sleep tracker for this experiment. And don’t forget to dream journal!
    • Suggested Reading (optional): Science: Poor sleep disproportionately undermines the health of communities of color. Researchers want to figure out why—and find solutions
• Assignment:
• Write a project idea for bringing one of the sleep or dream altering techniques we have reviewed out of the lab, to the wider world. This can be in a novel experiment, device, artwork, movement…go big, stretch. Please add your slide here. Groups are fine, submitting together is fine, adding onto/iterating on your slide from last week is fine!
• AND rest once this week when you’re really, really supposed to be working. It can be as little as 10 minutes. Write a paragraph about your experience of rest, and your relationship to rest here, now, this semester, in the context of Azizi and Tricia Hersey’s messages. Submit here.
• Zoom Recording Here

 3.15.22 Project Proposals Due

• Assignment: We’ve had some weeks to think through initial project ideas. This is your chance to make the first mockup. What you hand in should help the instructors feel your idea, not just understand it. We will spend all of this class thinking through these feelings and ideas together. 
• Submission Link Here
• Zoom recording here

 3.22.22 Spring Break

• Suggested lovely optional reading:
  •  Freedom Dreams by Robin Kelley
  • The Fall of Sleep by Jean-Luc Nancy
  • Dreaming in Dark Times Six Exercises in Political Thought by Sharon Sliwinski

 3.29.22 Building Sleep Interfaces for the Body

• Lecturers: Abhinandan Jain, Adam Haar, Michelle Carr
• Required Readings:
  • • The Interface Is the Art Work
    • Dream Engineering: Simulating Worlds through Sensory Stimulation
  • Optional Readings: 
    • Incorporation of External Stimuli into Dream Content
    • In Sleep The Body Is a Channel to Communicate with the Dreaming Mind
• Assignment:
  • • It’s spring break. Let’s take it easy. Read the two required readings, and write a paragraph here about  how you would incubate a specific dream, using strategies from the readings. I wonder how all our strategies will differ, and how they might align.
• Link for the Recording

 4.5.22: Alternate Epistemologies: Dreams and the Dreaming

• Lecturers: Matthew Spellberg
  • • Readings:
    • On Dream Sharing and Its Purpose
    • The American Dream is Alie and Well, 2012. Nicholas Galanin, Tlingit/Unangax
    • The American Dream is Alive and Well, 2020, Michael Strain, New Enterprise Institute
• Assignment:
  • Design a new space for dream sharing. A ‘space’ can be a literal space or something looser –> a new head space, a new epistemological space, a new relationship space, a game. Research shows 24% of Americans surveyed report never having shared a dream. How can we help each other imagine together? How can we build space for shared rest?
  • Inspiration: 
    • Perfect Sleep from Tega Brain
    • New Circadia
    • Klein Room for Dream Sharing from Yiou Wang
• Submission Link

  4.12.22 Lucid Dreaming

• Lecturers: Karen Konkoly, Michelle Carr
  • • Readings:
    • Real-time dialogue between experimenters and dreamers during REM sleep 
      • Here is a short interview/explainer if this paper is confusing: https://www.npr.org/transcripts/971958260
    • Virtual Lucidity: A Media Archaeology of Dream Hacking Wearables
• Assignment:
  • Listen to this audio from Stephen LaBerge as you fall asleep. LaBerge is one of the key figures in Lucid Dreaming research for the past ~50 years.
  • OPTIONAL do a wake-back-to-bed procedure for lucid dreaming, since that tends to be the most effective (wake up around 4am, stay awake for 30 minutes, and then fall back asleep listening to Stephen LaBerge’s recording; or alternatively snooze your alarm clock and intentionally sleep in after awakening in the morning). Karen also has made an app for the targeted lucidity reactivation procedure that people can try if they have an android and a fitbit.
• Submission Link (a short paragraph)

  4.19.22 Dreams, Nightmares, Traumas, Addictions

• Lecturers: Dr. Judith Amores
  • • Readings:
    • Sleep Enhances Exposure Therapy
      • Here is a short interview/explainer if this paper is confusing: https://www.npr.org/transcripts/971958260
    • About Sleep’s Role in Memory. Only Section C Is Required Reading! 
• Assignment:
  • Only assignment is to do the reading and have some questions ready for Dr. Amores, and other than that just prepare for your interim project presentation. Make sure to pilot your projects so we get some dream + sleep data to discuss for each of them.

  4.26.22 Interim Project Presentation 11 am

• For this presentation you should have a realized project that can get feedback and get refined by 5.10. Some real sleep and dream data, some experiences for us to try!
• By this time you should have had one person who is not in your group experience your project/prototype.
• If you have slides, please submit them here

5.3.22: Dreaming of Light Beer: Dream Engineering Ethics

• Group Discussion:
  • This class discussion will be about what a Dream is, and in turn how we must protect dreams and dreamers. Your assignments and the readings will be our inspiration for discussing ethics.
• Reading:
  • Inside Your Dreamscape
  • Prisoners of the Dream — Matthew Spellberg
    • • • Optional:
        • Study Examines the presence of Ads In Dreams
        • Dreamless: the silent epidemic of REM sleep loss.
• Assignment:
  • Hand in one page with a) an image and b) a short written definition of what ‘A Dream is’ to you. Please make these as thoughtful and personal as you can.
    • This semester we have seen dreams as relevant clinical markers (Dr. Azizi Seixas), as intensified mind wandering (Dr. Thomas Andrillon), as memories evolving in real time (Dr. Bob Stickgold), as cultural symbols and carriers for intergenerational stories (Dr. Matthew Spellberg), as intervention opportunities for trauma and nightmares (Dr. Judith Amores and Dr. Michelle Carr), as bridges to communicate across levels of consciousness (Karen Konkoly), as unusually personal traces of medical history (Dario Robleto). So…What is a dream? 
      • Your pages will be collected, along with submissions from outside artists (Ian Cheng, Agnieszka Kurant, Carsten Höller) and all of our amazing class speakers (scientists and artists) into a booklet of the many things ‘A dream is’ and can be. This will be our artifact together.
      • Examples and Submission Page Here. Format like the other slides please.

 5.10.22 Final Project Presentations @7:00 pm

• We will not meet at 11-1 today, only at 7 pm, on floor 5 of the Media lab
  • For your final project, we will:
    • a) show your work ‘science fair’ style to each other May 10 @ 7pm
    • b) hand in a final write up of your data, process, prototypes, May 12 @ 12 pm. This can be in the form of a paper, a presentation, a poster — but importantly something which somebody new to the work can understand. UPLOAD Link Here.
      • This combined written component and presentation component will make up your project grade
• Due Dates:
  • Presentation is May 10 @ 7:00 pm. 
  • Write-up is May 12 @ 12:00 pm (grades due May 13, this gives us time to read)
  • And anytime this last week, please tell us your thoughts about the course here. We’d love to teach it again, and know what to keep and what to change.