Constellations is the union of an album and series of artworks, inspired by the dialogue between dreams and music, led by artists Kate Alderton and Tim Arnold, featuring violinist Jonathan Hill.

The project was born from a series of late-night conversations about dreams and music, exploring whether both emerge from a shared imaginative realm. Each of the ten compositions on the album were crafted by Tim on ten different nights, spanning ten weeks of dialogue. While Kate drifted into sleep and dreams on the south coast of England, Arnold began composing a new piece of music in London, inspired by dreams.

Dream incubation for artwork

While the music flowed through Tim, Kate’s dreams started to transform, unfolding in vivid, symbolic imagery. The artists explored the concept that the music and dreams were engaged in a dialogue, each shaping and inspiring the other across the boundary between waking and dreaming.

Once Tim had completed recording the album, Kate drew on her research into Ancient Greek dream incubation practices, exploring the ways music effects dream imagery and how to incubate dreams as a response.

In a practice named ‘dreamstreaming’ Kate listened to each track of the album as she slept over a series of nights, using the dreams that emerged to create collages, resulting in the original album artwork for the album. Constellations was released in 2020.