I’ve decided to focus on dreams for my next project, that revolves around sleep.  There are two concepts  related to dreaming that I find particularly interesting.  The first concept is the idea that people only dream in black and white, which I remember reading somewhere years ago.  But I personally know I dream in color so I decided to start researching it.  I read that only 12% of people in the U.S. reported that they dream in black and white, according to a study done in 2018. However, the majority of people who reported to dream in color are under the age of 25.  People who are 55 and over had more of a percentage that reported to dream in black and white.  This is assumed to be due to childhood exposure of television.  Older people grew up with black and white television.  When the same study was done back in the 1940s it was reported that 3/4 of people in the U.S. said they dreamed in black and white.  So since then the numbers have basically reversed.

My next concept that I’m researching is facial recognition in dreams.  It is said that the human brain can not create a new face.  You can not dream up a face that does not exist.  Even if it’s a stranger that you do not recognize, it was probably a face you were exposed to perhaps on your walk to work, or maybe on the news, or the internet. Also if you think of the people you dream about, faces are not usually detailed. If you dream about someone you know, do you know it’s them because you can clearly see their face or do you just know it’s them?

So my piece will be a visual depiction of both of these concepts together.