Dreammachine V2.X
Dreammachine v2.X
Sleep gel mask, physical computing, breathing sensor, Light-Emitting Diodes, neckpillow
Bryon Gysin and William S. Burroughs famously crafted the sculptural dreammachine apparatus based is still an object from which the observer is detached from spatially and sensorially. So the focus is on the phenomenon of the light flickering across the observer’s eyelids. However, in my reconfiguration of the flicker device the viewer is placed in a sleep mask and subjected to the pulsing of light timed to match alpha brain waves, just as Gysin’s and Burroughs did. Here there is a discomfort between the lulling feeling of the warm embrace of the neck pillow and the relaxing coolness of the mask as the observer experiences intense internal visualization. This piece bridges the gap between Crary’s theory of modern visual culture as one of undulation and subjective truth and the technical controlled use of this theory to destroy subjects of society’s ability to perceive by eroding sleep – a technique of the observer – with controlled images of entertainment media into a postmodern work that blurs the electrical processes of the body with the electrical processes of the microcontroller.
