For my first project, I wanted to make something that explored the question of "What is the difference between Dream and Delerium? Between being awake and being asleep?" What I ended up creating was what I called The Body-Mind Arousal Continuum Index, or put simply, The Dream Matrix.
What I developed was a visual method of comparing different states of being. A person's state would be determined by an outside observer answering a series of multiple-choice questions. Each question would relate in some way to the subject's mental and physical arousal, and each answer would have a coordinate value with it. The subject's status would start at (0,0) and would vary based on the observer's responses.
What resulted was a chart like this:
Within the chart are various "zones" of mental activity. There are three main zones:
- Average waking state (blue) - This is the realm where most people will spend their day. It's an average balance of mental and physical arousal, nothing exceeding the normal activities a person would need.
- Natural Extreme (yellow) - Far outside of the normal realm of basic functions, these states are outside of the normal waking state, but are acheived naturally. These include areas like REM sleep and "caffine rushes." Most people will drift into this realm regularly.
- Danger Zone (red) - When a person enters this zone, they have gone far outside the area that the body and mind were designed to physically withstand. Any prolonged time spent in this zone, on any extreme, can lead to permanent damage.
