Inside the Dreamachine
Dreaming about the past and future. An invitation to be immersed in light, sound, and an exploration of queer identity and self-expression.
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About the installation
A years-long journey towards self-understanding revealed the power of musical vibration, light stimulation, and melodic movement for mind-body connection.
Flickering (“stroboscopic”) light and the warmth of hypnotic, driving house music have helped me reach meditative states, shifting away from sensory overload and towards creativity, openness to love, and exploration of the full beauty of queer existence.
These are technologies pioneered by queers. In 1959, among the artists and writers of Paris’s Beat Hotel, Brion Gysin and Ian Sommerville – William S. Burroughs’ lover and collaborator – built the first Dreamachine: a slotted cylinder spinning around a light bulb, meant to be watched with eyes closed. Gysin, a gay artist who grew up in Edmonton, hoped it would let people make their own visions rather than consume mass-produced ones.
Since the original, research into the Dreamachine and the technology behind it have made significant advances. Researchers, including a team at the University of Sussex, now study how flicker shapes perception and consciousness. In 2022, they worked with artists on a Dreamachine that toured four UK cities. Close to 40,000 people took part, and most described a sense of connection, love and compassion.
The inspiration of that history, combined with skills in projection mapping and electronic music production learned at the Digital Arts Resource Centre in Arts Court, has shaped Inside the Dreamachine.
This is an invitation into an immersive audio and visual space: to relax, to move to the music, and to experience stroboscopic light inside an 8-foot re-imagining of the original Dreamachine.
Relax, dance, and reflect in celebration with the queer community that has gathered at ChromaQueer.
The artist
Chris Cowperthwaite is an Ottawa-based technologist and emerging digital artist exploring light, sound and vibration as creative media, from projection mapping to vibroacoustics. He is active in Ottawa’s queer community through projects like the Real Big Dills and Ten Oaks Project.