By Jennifer Glickel
DNAinfo Reporter/Producer
LOWER EAST SIDE — On a sunny day in 1958, artist Brion Gysin was sitting on a bus in the south of France. As it passed under some trees he closed his eyes and experienced a burst of brightly colored flashes caused, he later discovered, by the "flicker" effect.
The flickering light on Gysin’s eyelids created a trance-like hallucinatory state and inspired the central piece for which the New Museum’s latest exhibit, "Brion Gysin: Dream Machine," is named.
Viewers of Gysin’s "Dreamachine," which the artist created in 1961, don’t use their eyes to enjoy the art — in fact, their eyes are meant to be closed.
The piece consists of a cylinder with slits cut in the sides that spins on a record turntable with a light bulb suspended in its center.
When spun at 78 rotations per minute, the cylinder projects light at a steady frequency of eight to 13 pulses per second, which corresponds to alpha waves present in the human brain during wakeful relaxation.
Best known for using the cut-up method of dividing words and phrases into pieces and rearranging them to create new meanings in his artwork, Gysin worked as a painter, performer, poet, and writer in producing art before his death in 1986.
Examples spanning all of his work are included in his first U.S. retrospective, which opened Wednesday at the Lower East Side museum.
The exhibition includes more than 300 drawings, paintings, slide projections, films, photo collages and sound works, as well as an original "Dreamachine."
"Brion Gysin: Dream Machine" opened at the New Museum on Wednesday and runs through October 3. The New Museum is located at 235 Bowery off of Prince Street.
