Book Review: Chapel of Extreme Experience by John Geiger

Chapel of Extreme Experience:

A Short History of Stroboscopic Light and the Dream Machine

by John Geiger

      If you’ve ever found yourself staring into the dancing flames of a campfire and suddenly realized time has slipped away and you’ve been entranced, you probably were in an altered state of consciousness without even realizing it. Further, if you’ve sat around a campfire with friends with the play of orange and yellow light alternating with shadows in irregular rhythms moving across their faces and the conversation has taken a turn towards more philosophical, speculative, spiritual, or introspective territories, you may wonder why these kinds of conversations flow more lucidly then they do when you are immersed in the mundane aspects of everyday life. There is something primal about the presence of flames, something that taps into the deepest layers of our being, relaxes us, and allows the contents of consciousness to flow freely into our waking minds. John Geiger, in Chapel of Extreme Experience, scientifically calls this phenomenon “flicker” and explains how its effects have been studied by scientists, induced with new technologies and drugs, and embraced by counter-culturalists and artists who turn to it for artistic inspiration and a deeper understanding of who we are and how we connect to the world we come from.

According to Geiger, flicker can be induced in a variety of ways. At its most basic level, a child experiences it when looking at a light and passing its spread out fingers back and forth in front of its eyes. Some epilectics experience something similar before going into seizures and schizophrenics may encounter it through audial or visual hallucinations. In modern times, film reels work through the use of flicker and the invention of the stroboscopic light brings on trance and hallucinatory conditions that extend for prolonged periods of time, making it possibly for psychiatrists to study its effects on brain activity. During his childhood, Brion Gysin, the largely overlooked mover and shaker of the counter cultures of the 1950s and 1960s, had the experience hallucinating when sitting in the back seat of a car that was driving under tree branches during an intensely sunny day. This experience led him to his interest in the Dream Machine, the central focus of this book.

Geiger starts off with a brief survey of scientific studies from the early 20^th century conducted in the field of neuropsychiatry and pharmacology. One major finding, and the one that preoccupies Geiger most, is that flicker induced through the use of strobe lights synchronizes and alters the rate of alpha waves in the brain. Alpha waves are associated with relaxation, dreaming, and fantasizing. The science he refers to is primitive by today’s standards and the hypotheses drawn are potentially suspect, but this isn’t irrelevant in the context of this book because Geiger’s purpose is to demonstrate the cultural impact that flicker has had over modern times.

This brings us to the Dream Machine, a device originally invented by Ian Sommerville, the boyfriend of Beat Generation, transgressive, and science-fiction author William S. Burroughs in the late 1950s. The Dream Machine is made by placing a bare light bulb on a turntable surrounded by a cylinder of cardboard with shapes cut into it. As it spins, the flicker causes trances and hallucinations. Brion Gysin became fascinated with it because it could cause an altered state of consciousness without the use of illegal drugs, without dangerous side effects, and without harmful after-effects. Since the Dream Machine works best with closed eyes because its effects are strongest when the flickering lights penetrate the translucent skin of the eyelids, Brion Gysin called it the only work of art you look at with your eyes closed.

Although anyone with minimal engineering skills can construct a Dream Machine, Gysin tried to market it as a psychedelic alternative to television. He was modestly successful as some big corporations liked the idea but eventually abandoned it for being too difficult to advertise. Geiger claims it posed too great of a risk to epilectics, but this explanation sounds hollow. A simple warning label on the package could easily have dealt with that problem. My own theory is that it didn’t catch on because it requires active engagement from the user. Television is an entirely passive medium that requires absolute submission on the part of the viewer who sinks into a dream-like state and absorbs whatever content is fed to them. You can consciously choose to think about what you watch, but few people are motivated enough to do so. The Dream Machine, on the other hand, requires attention and interaction from its users, demanding a kind of self-awareness and observation of one’s own subjectivity to be of any value. Most people are just too shallow and lazy to derive any benefit from the experience (see Marshall McLuhan on the difference between hot and cold media).

While Gysin failed to bring the Dream Machine into the living rooms of mainstream America, he influenced culture in other ways. John Geiger explores his dalliances with the Beat Generation and the hippies when owning the Beat Hotel in the Left Bank of Paris and the 1001 Nights restaurant in Tangier, Morocco where he liaised with the Rolling Stones and introduced Brian Jones to the tribal mountain musicians who he recorded as The Master Musicians of Jajouka. He explored hallucinogenic drug use with William Burroughs and Timothy Leary after having met with Aldous Huxley to discuss his experiences with mescaline. Gysin’s art never received widespread acclaim among critics although his attempts at incorporating elements of flicker in his paintings of Arabic calligraphy and Moroccan market scenes inspired the Op Art movement and other postmodernists. He was associated with some of the most famous counter-cultural figures and late 20^th century artists, film makers, and musicians so his influence is largely felt yet also largely unacknowledged.

Towards the end of this short tour around technology, art, culture, and psychotropic drugs Geiger returns to the scientific study of flicker in our hyper-technological age. He dips into the realms of parapsychology, telepathy, and other pseudoscientific muck that I tend to avoid. Make of that what you will.

John Geiger’s Chapel of Extreme Experience amounts to being more of an homage to the intersection between technology, psychedelic drugs, culture, and art than a treatise that makes a definite statement. Taken that way, it’s a brief and interesting read. It does, however, show how Brion Gysin acted as a connecting thread through all of those fields, a pioneering psychonaut and maybe even the Godfather of Psychedelia. Maybe he will remain an unsung genius destined for obscurity because he was too authentic for the human species which seems to be passively stagnating in the fake realities imposed on them by digital technology. This is an obscure book probably destined for further obscurity and of most interest for future book collectors more than anyone else.