Sleeping In A City That Never Sleeps

New York City is best described as hustling, bustling, busy, noisy, crowded and restless. To show that “the city that never sleeps” also has its private, quiet and relaxed moments, the Brooklyn-based collective Dawn of Man came up with the idea to project videos of sleeping New Yorkers on the walls of buildings.

The collective’s Projection Napping project (a play on Projection Mapping) involves a series of larger-than-life videos of sleeping people projected onto the sides of brick buildings during night-time. According to the artists it was quite challenging to find suitable spots since sometimes the scouted location simply disappeared over night due to murals that popped up, or because a newly completed high-rises blocked the view on the old wall.

The sleeping New Yorkers not only show a nice contrast to the busy city life — it also makes passers-by stop to reconsider their daily hustle, giving rise to the fact that even in the city that never sleeps, we need to take a break from time to time.