Are you awake? How do you know? Nigel Benson meets dream merchant Chris Krishna-Pillay.
The human mind is an amazing thing.
Even asleep, we're still busy creating all sorts of wonderful stories and fantasies.
Australian science educator Chris Krishna-Pillay arrives in Dunedin today for the 2008 New Zealand International Science Festival, where he will premiere his new show about the unconscious mind, Somnium - The Science of Sleep.
"I'm very excited about getting over there and doing this show. It's the world premiere and it's going to be very interesting," he says from Melbourne.
"Sleep is something we all have in common. We all need it, like it and crave it. That's quite profound.
"It's something we all do and talk about and yet it's very, very primal.
"We all do it and yet so much of it remains a mystery.
"How long should we sleep for? What do dreams mean? Do babies dream? Why do people sleepwalk? Why do we sleep at all?
"When we close our eyes and slide into that other existence, we enter a world steeped in folklore and superstition - a world that is as strange as it is fascinating," Krishna-Pillay says.
"Scientists have studied sleep for generations and, as our understanding has grown and technology developed, more and more has become known about the subconscious brain.
Like most areas of human biology, which we're only just scratching the surface of now, it shows what science has found out up to this point."
As part of the the preparation for the show, New Zealanders have been completing a survey about their sleeping habits.
Apart from age and gender, the survey asks questions such as what you have nightmares about and what your favourite dreams are.
Some of the more common dream themes include flying, romantic liaisons, dancing, invisibility, communicating with animals, and being praised by work superiors or authority figures.
Common nightmares are being chased, being naked in public, falling, being paralysed, being threatened by dangerous animals or monsters and death or injury.
"The number one dream is some sort of romantic liaison. By a mile. Whether that's falling in love or just shagging wasn't really clear.
"The most common nightmare is falling or being chased," he says.
"I'm pretty sceptical about interpreting dreams too literally, though. Most sleep researchers say dreams are based on recent experiences."
Krishna-Pillay is the manager of the CSIRO Education Centre in Victoria, which creates education programmes for more than 300,000 students, teachers and public every year.
Many of the programmes use music, theatre and comedy to make science technology as accessible and interesting as possible to a wide audience.
"I find the idea of science and scientific thinking really interesting and I love helping others to understand it.
"Plus, I get to work with passionate and positive science communicators and educators," Krishna-Pillay says.
"At the end of the day, in a class of 25 students, doing the science-theatre thing might only make a difference to one or two of them.
But that's one or two that may not have been reached doing anything else."
He is also a science consultant on the Australian children's television series Wicked Science and is a regular guest on the Einstein A Go Go radio programme.
The project has brought some personal revelations, Krishna-Pillay says.
"I've been talking about this dream thing so much that I've had a couple of dreams about sleep and dreaming.
"I've had moments that I couldn't decide if I was dreaming or awake. So I ran against the wall and did a back-flip and landed on my feet.
"I knew then I was dreaming, because if I had done that awake I would have badly hurt myself," he says.
"That's when I realised that I could direct my dreams."
Somnium - The Science of Sleep explores what sleep does for us, the different types and stages of sleep and the different sleep disorders experienced by people.
The show will also feature a live dream interpretation.
"It's just me and the band doing animated stuff with stage music to take people into a different world.
We do songs ranging from '80s Brit pop to rock opera, but facts and data are the spine of it.
It's the current theories of sleep juxtaposed with the survey stuff," Krishna-Pillay says.
"It's not just for young people. Anyone from teenagers up are going to enjoy it and learn some fascinating stuff from it."
New Zealand International Science Festival director Sue Clarke agreed the show would have widespread appeal.
"With songs, comedy and multimedia, this is the truth, as we know it, in its most entertaining form.
"People will laugh, think and wonder and go home with something to really dream about," she said.
Somnium - The Science of Sleep is on at the Fortune Theatre at 6pm on Saturday, 8pm on Sunday and 5.30pm and 8pm on Monday as part of the New Zealand International Science Festival.
