HOW TO SLEEP

A novel and provocative exploration of how and why we sleep bringing together biology, art, and cultural theory.

Most humans spend around a third of their lives asleep. However, cultural, political, or aesthetic thought tends to remain concerned with the interpretation and actions of those who are awake. How to Sleep argues instead that sleep is a complex vital phenomena with a dynamic aesthetic and biological consistency.

Arguing through examples drawn from contemporary, modern and renaissance art; from literature; film and
computational media, and bringing these into relation with the history and findings of sleep science, this book
argues for a new interplay between biology and culture. Meditations on sex, exhaustion, drugs, hormones and
scientific instruments all play their part in this wide-ranging exposition of sleep as an ecology of interacting
processes.

Matthew Fuller is Professor of Cultural Studies and Director of the Centre for Cultural Studies, Goldsmiths,
University of London, UK. He is co-author of Evil Media (2012), Editor of Software Studies: a Lexicon (2008)
and co-editor of the journal Computational Culture.