Dreamachine, the psychedelic contraption hoping to blow British minds
One day in 1958, Brion Gysin had a transcendental experience on the way to Marseille. The flickering of sunlight through avenues of trees along the roadside and the speed of the bus he was riding proved optimal, or so he thought, to put him in a hallucinatory dreamlike state.
“An overwhelming flood of intensely bright patterns in supernatural colours exploded behind my eyelids: a multidimensional kaleidoscope whirling out through space,” Gysin recalled. “I was swept out of time. I was out in a world of infinite number. The vision stopped abruptly as we left the trees.”
Gysin, an avant-garde artist and poet perhaps best known for the textual cut-up method that inspired David Bowie to his lyrics, was determined to create a gizmo that could induce others to
