Gysin's Dreamachine

Flicker-effects entered art when, in the early 1960s, the painter and writer, Brion Gysin collaborated with the mathematician Ian Sommerville to produce what he called the Dreamachine: a cylinder with slits cut in the sides and a light bulb suspended at its centre, placed on a record turntable and rotated at 78 revolutions per minute. As the viewer faced it with their eyes closed, the flickering light caused trance-like hallucinations.

Officially unveiled in March 1962 at an exhibition at the Museé des Arts Decoratifs in Paris, Gysin’s Dreamachine followed on experiments in collage (inventing the ‘cut-up’ technique that was taken on by his friend, the writer William Burroughs), calligraphy, then sound works, using magnetic tape and early computer technology.

Gysin thought of Dreamachine as both a new kind of artwork - ‘the first art object to be seen with the eyes closed’ – and a potential form of mass entertainment, which could ultimately replace the television in people’s homes. His fellow artists and writers saw the Dreamachine’s potential to be a source of endless artistic and spiritual inspiration. Burroughs thought it could be used to ‘storm the citadels of enlightenment.’ The poet Alan Ginsberg was similarly moved: ‘I looked into it, it sets up optical fields as religious and mandalic as the hallucinogenic drugs – it’s like being able to have jewelled biblical designs and landscapes without taking chemicals’.