One of the artists who volunteered to become sleep deprived over a seven-day period - as an experiment into the effects of fatigue on the creative process - has just published a short story.

Following the challenge from the Australian Network for Art & Technology, best-selling author Sean Williams has published Death and the Hobbyist on the project's website.

It's available for free via THIS LINK .

CQUniversity's new Appleton Institute sleep research labs in Adelaide provided the controlled environment for the 'sleep-deprived art' experiment.

The participants were deprived of stimulating food and drinks and had no access to the outside world, to the extent of not being sure whether it was night or day.

Appleton Institute Director Professor Drew Dawson described the project as 'like the Big Brother house without the swimming pool' and 'the hermit of the 21st century'.

"There is a long history of frenetic activity around the creative impulse ... there's been a long history of depriving people in order to drive creativity and spiritual awareness.

"We wanted to explore that and to reverse how people normally experience the creative process. We isolated them and observed them," he said.

"We looked at a whole bunch of measures around alertness, creativity and fluency."

LINK HERE to listen to a related Radio National interview or visit The Subjects blog site for details on the participating artists.