DREAMACHINE PLANS
created by BRION GYSIN

WHAT IS A DREAMACHINE?

In the history of the world, DREAMACHINES are the first objects made to be viewed with closed eyes.
In the history of art, DREAMACHINES bring to a conclusion the period of kinetic invention in modern painting and sculpture. DREAMACHINES open a new era and a new era of vision... interior vision.

"DREAMACHINES make visible the fundamental order present in the physiology of the brain."

You are the artist when you approach a DREAMACHINE and close your eyes. What the DREAMACHINE incites you to see is yours... your own. The brilliant interior visions you so suddenly see whirling around inside your head are produced by your own brain activity. These may not be your first glimpses of these dazzling lights and celestially colored images. DREAMACHINES provide them only just as long as you choose to look into them. What you are seeing is perhaps a broader vision than you may have had before of your own incalculable treasure, the "Jungian" store of symbols which we share with all normally constituted humanity. From this storehouse, artists and artisans have draw. the elements of art down the ages. In the rapid flux of images, you will immediately recognize, crosses, stars and halos... woven patterns like pre-Columbian textiles and Islamic rugs... repetitive patterns on ceramic tile... in embroideries of all times... rapidly fluctuating serial images of abstract art... what look like endless expanses of fresh paint laid on with a palette knife.

DREAMACHINE visions usually begin by the meteorically rapid transit of infinite series of abstract elements. These may be followed in time by clear perception of faces, figures and the apparent entractment of highly colored serial pseudo-events. In other words, dreams in color. The DREAMACHINE is a dream- machine. These dreams can be immediately interrupted and brought to an end simply by opening your eyes. However you look into a DREAMACHINE, in a short time you will have acquired greater self-knowledge, extended the limits of your vision, brightened your perception of a treasure you may not have known you own. --Brion Gysin

DREAMACHINE

Had a transcendental storm of color visions today in the bus going to Marseilles. We ran through a long avenue of trees and I closed my eyes against the setting sun. An overwhelming flood of intensely bright patterns in supernatural colors exploded behind my eyelids: a multi-dimensional kaleidoscope whirling out through space. I was out in a world of infinite number. The vision stopped abruptly as we left the trees. Was that a vision? What happened to me?"
That is an entry in my journal, dated December 21, 1958.

Ian Sommerville, who also read Walter, ( Walter Grey, "The Living Brain" ) wrote me from Cambridge on February 15, 1960:

"I have made a simple flicker machine. You look at 'it with your eyes shut and the flicker plays over your eyelids. Visions start with a kaleidoscope of colors on a plane in front of the eyes and gradually become more complex and beautiful, breaking like surf on a shore until whole patterns of color are pounding to get in. After awhile the visions were permanently behind my eyelids and I was in the middle of the whole scene with limitless patterns being generated around me. There was an almost unbearable feeling of spatial movement for a while but It was well worth getting through for I found that when it stopped I was high above the earth in a universal blaze of glory. Afterwards I found that my perception of the world around me had increased very notably. All conceptions of being dragged or tired had dropped away..."
I made a "machine" from his ensuing description and added to it an interior cylinder covered vith the type of painting I have developed in the three years since my first flicker experience. Flicker may prove to be a valid instrument of practical psychology: some people see and others do not. The DREAMACHINE, with it's patterns visible to the open eye, induces people to see. The fluctuating elements of flickered design support the development of autonomous "movies", intensely pleasurable and, possibly, instructive to the viewer.
What is art? What is color? What is vision? These old questions demand new answers when, in the light of the DREAMACHINE one see all of ancient and modern abstract art with eyes closed.

From: Brion Gysin, "DREAMACHINE"

FLICKER

Brain waves, minute electrical oscillations associated with brain activity, can be measured accurately and graphically recorded by the electroencephalograph (EEG) machine. EEG records show that brain rhythms divide into groups according to frequency. One of these groups, the alpha or scanning rhythms, is strongest when the brain is unoccupied, searching for pattern; weakest during purposeful thinking, eyes open studying pattern. The strength and type of rhythms vary between individuals. The EEG records of some primitive peoples are similar to those of a ten year old in our society. Variations occur with age. The alpha rhythms do not appear in children until they are about four years old.

From: Ian Sommerville, "Flicker"