The Hypno Campus Project is a special kind of sleep concert. Participants not only sleep during the music but upon awakening, compare their dreams to see if the music has induced some sort of subconscious commonality of feelings or images.
Five composers from Europe and the USA have joined forces to produce a musical landscape to accompany dreaming. All have interest and/or experience in the world of sleep concerts.
Participants in the project download over 7 hours of music, (5 x 90 minute REM cycles) along with an anonymous dream questionnaire the results of which are collated and analysed using a large language model to search for themes and commonalities. Participants are not allowed access to the database of dreams until they have uploaded their own in order to avoid unconscious bias.
Hypno-Campus is part sonic art and part pseudo-psychological experiment and an exciting first step into a branch of unconscious audio art that has only just become technologically possible.
Personnel:
Robert Rich https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Rich_(musician) is one of the foremost exponents of ambient music today. With his individualistic choice of musical instrumentation including lap steel guitar, wooden flute and analogue and digital electronics. With over four decades experience, Robert Rich is no stranger to sleep concerts having performed them in Europe Asia and America. He is based in the USA.
Martin Stürtzer https://martinstuertzer.de/ Martin’s live ambient sets on Youtube have become increasingly popular in recent years leading to a number of live concerts, (including sleep concerts) in his native Germany. His tasteful blends of sonic musical forces has earned him an ever increasing following of loyal fans of his dark ambient and dub techno music. He has recently been awarded the Schallwelle award for the 'best artist national 2023' in Germany.
Peter Chilvers http://www.peterchilvers.com is an English musician and software designer. Best known for creating the iPhone applications ‘Bloom’ and ‘Trope’ with Brian Eno, he has also toured with Karl Hyde (Underworld) and recorded a number of albums with Tim Bowness. He will soon be releasing new material through the Curious Music label.
Gareth Whittock With a background in composing music for theatre, film and animation, Gareth has toured extensively in Europe, Asia and the USA playing ambient music on his Aum Guitar which he invented along with Chaos Guitars and the Vibraslide infinite sustain system. He lives in France from where he conducts numerous sonic experiments.
Luca Formentini https://www.unguitar.com Luca Formentini is a composer and sound artist who has worked with amongst others, Markus Stockhausen, Robert Rich, Holger Czukay and Steve Jansen as well as numerous visual artists. His work embodies the use of guitar which he supplements through his use of self-made instruments, voice, field recordings and other acoustic and electronic instruments. He has been involved in sleep concerts in his native Italy and has toured in Europe, USA and Japan.
The Hypno-Campus project launches on the 14th June 2024 and will run initially for 14 days. Tickets are available now via:
https://garethwhittock.bandcamp.com/album/hypno-campus
For more information please contact hypnocampusproject@gmail.com