I read about the Dreamachine in the Times several months ago, and it sounded quite appealing. You make a cylinder with some patterns cut out of it, put it on top of a rotating base, hang a light in the middle, and sit in front of it with your eyes closed, and you have dreams while you're awake! Some guy is selling them for $400--screw that. I wanted to make one myself, but there were two obstacles: I've never quite gotten comfortable with making stuff involving motors, and I knew it wouldn't look nearly as cool without the right patterns as pictured in the article, but figuring them out from one photo seemed a dicey proposition.

A few months later, after spotting one belonging to the Brian Jonestown Massacre in DiG! I was inspired to look into it again, and both of those obstacles were quickly cleared. As for the first, the base can, even should, be a record player that rotates at 78rpm. And as for the second, several sites had versions of the exact pattern layout that looked good and probably authentic to me. Here are a few of those: noah.org, 10111.org, brainwashed.com. Warning: extremely pretentious prose ahead: ...it is a method of balancing and effecting a communication with the three bases of life itself, each then becoming more strongly connected. This allows a much more pure form of energy to pass through them, feeding and being fed by themselves.

The Dreamachine was invented by Brion Gysin and Ian Sommerville, friends of William S. Burroughs, blah blah. Yes, they were on psychotropic drugs. But as far as I can tell the Dreamachine was sincerely meant to be used without them. It immediately made sense to me that it would work because of experiences I've had watching a low sun through trees while in a car on a highway, or while standing in front of a strobe light in a thick smoke machine-generated fog at a Flaming Lips show. The device works by the patterns cut out of the cylinder causing the light to flash against your eyelids at between 7 and 13 Hz (6 holes in each row * 1.2 rotations per second = 9.6Hz), the same frequency as so-called Alpha brain waves. Supposedly having to process the light at that frequency will cause those waves to appear, in turn causing certain effects associated with the appearance of those waves. I've been telling people without looking into it too thoroughly that Alpha waves are "the ones that happen when you're dreaming." The Skeptic's Dictionary says they are usually associated with lack of visual processing and lack of focus, but can also appear when one is not relaxed. Other sites say that Alpha waves do also appear during REM sleep.

Anyway, for my Dreamachine I glued together two pieces of oak tag--the plans specified a height of 36", but for me 28" with the top row of holes left off seemed more than adequate. I drew a 2" grid onto the oak tag and then drew on the patterns for the holes. The web sites wanted me to print out templates of the shapes, but that seemed unnecessary when they had been so nicely designed to consist entirely of straight lines and and circular arcs:

My only advice for the cutting is to start with a new blade for your X-acto knife. I switched part of the way through and it made the difference between making the cut three times and getting a slightly jagged edge, and making it once with a perfect edge.

Record players seem so ubiquitous at yard sales and the like that I was slightly embarrassed to have to seek one out. But it just wasn't happening the easy way, and I realized it was a rather narrowing requirement to want one that just spins and doesn't play records (and therefore is very cheap), so I selected one from eBay that had no discernable brand name and was estimated to be from the 1930s or 40s, for $5 + $13 shipping. When I got it I had to solder on a new AC plug for it, but after doing so I was quite relieved when it spun nicely. It even has the mechanism for stacking up multiple records on the spindle and playing them in succession, but the chances of that working seemed remote, and it was not relevant anyway.

A few days after a brief initial trial, my roommate tripped over the Dreamachine and left it slightly torn and rather warped. I repaired it several days later with some electrical tape and stabilizing barbecue skewers, and have used it happily a few times since.

My experience so far is that the Dreamachine quickly produces surprisingly complex visual patterns that also change very quickly. My brain creatively fills in some details, causing me to imagine (but not really to believe) that these patterns are some object or event I am watching, or a landscape I am moving through. I haven't experienced the sensation of 360 degree view that some talk about. Usually I would not say that what I am experiencing is much like a dream. I'm watching these cool patterns go by, but I still know where I am and what's really happening. A few times though, that has changed. During one session, for a while I felt like my whole body was rotating on a horizontal axis, as if I were sitting on a giant record player (though I didn't think that was happening--it was like those virtual rides where they tip your seat around). Ian Sommerville seems to have described something similar as an early, unpleasant stage of his first Dreamachine session, but I didn't mind it. One other time I was made slightly anxious by a momentary feeling that I was hearing burbling sounds, and that I might be underwater in a large aquarium. Other times I've had dreamlike sensations that were more abstract, less memorable thoughts, like dreams I would have during a microsleep.

In general the Dreamachine is, for me, a very relaxing time. Often if I try to lie perfectly still in the dark and quiet, I am inevitably overcome within a few minutes by an itch or simply an urge to move a limb, and after that I will start fidgeting without even realizing it. The machine seems to provide enough of a stimulus that I'm distracted from those urges and have no trouble lying still at all. I seem to feel pretty serene after a session, though perhaps that will diminish with time. And the thing just looks so damn cool! Highly recommended for all non-epileptics.