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 me 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 has 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. Nearly 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 (DARC) in Arts Court, has shaped Inside the Dreamachine.