One hour apart
The material difference between eight and nine hours of sleep—perceptible through height, mass, and proportion.
Sleep Symphony
Transforming nightly sleep data into permanent physical artefacts—tangible representations that can be held, compared, and archived.
Overview
Sleep Symphony is data physicalisation—a method that transforms raw sleep data into physical objects where each night becomes a distinct artefact.
Intent
Making data tangible and permanent
While graphs communicate sleep patterns, physical objects make those patterns visceral. When you hold the difference between nine and eight hours of sleep, the variation becomes immediately perceptible—encouraging better sleep habits through material comparison rather than abstract numbers.
By transforming data into matter, Sleep Symphony creates permanent records. Data is continually destroyed—files are lost, services shut down, formats become obsolete. Physical artefacts endure.
Outcome
Archives you can hold
Each Sleep Symphony collection is a physical archive of sleep data from a chosen period—a week, month, or significant life event. The artefacts function as keepsakes, more intimate than photographs, preserving the rhythm and quality of rest during moments worth remembering.
The system is repeatable and extensible. Additional nights can be produced later using the same mapping, allowing collections to grow while maintaining consistent encoding across the entire series.
Images
Selected views demonstrating material variation, scale differences, and installation contexts.
Efficiency as texture
Surface micro-grain varies with sleep efficiency, encoding quality through tactile finish.
Week in view
A chronological set supports comparison and reflection across a chosen period.
Domestic installation
Designed to live with, the series reads clearly in everyday spaces and invites touch.
System
A disciplined encoding method that maps sleep metrics to physical parameters, creating consistent, comparable artefacts.
Data to form
- Sleep duration → overall height and volume
- Sleep efficiency → surface texture and finish quality
- Bedtime consistency → base diameter variation
- Wake interruptions → subtle surface facets
Each parameter is normalised across the series, ensuring that differences between nights remain perceptible and meaningful.
Repeatability
The mapping is documented with precise ranges and units. This allows new artefacts to align exactly with an existing collection, even when produced years apart.
All rules and measurements are archived with the artefacts, ensuring lasting transparency and reproducibility.
Materials
Developed first in SLS Nylon PA12, and now refined through Multi Jet Fusion (MJF) for even greater precision and consistency.
Initial production
Nylon PA12
The original Sleep Symphony series was produced in Nylon PA12 using Selective Laser Sintering. SLS was chosen over FDM because it provides access to higher quality engineering polymers and supports the precise, interdependent geometry of the designs without support scars.
This combination allowed thin walls, sharp internal features, and controlled tolerances to be realised reliably—critical for a system where small geometry changes represent genuine differences in the underlying sleep data.
Current practice
Nylon PA12
Subsequent experiments reproduced the same Sleep Symphony geometries using Multi Jet Fusion. MJF offers even more precise manufacture: finer detail, tighter dimensional control, and highly consistent surface quality across a batch.
Going forward, Sleep Symphony work will typically be produced in MJF Nylon PA12, while the original SLS series remains fully documented. Both processes are compatible with the same data‑to‑form mapping, so new artefacts can extend the archive without breaking the system.
Commission
Create a personal Sleep Symphony collection from your own sleep data, or extend an existing series.