Rockers Alter Minds In FLicKer

You don't necessarily need to use drugs or booze to alter your mind. But a number of musical people who have contribute to FLicKeR, an award-winning documentary on the film festival circuit that's about to get a wider release.

FLicKer tells the story of experimental artist, writer and inventor Brion Gysin, who grew up in Edmonton and died in 1986 at age 70. Though Gysin was perhaps best known for pioneering "cut-up" art, the film focuses on his "dream machine" invention. The contraption placed a bright light inside a rotating cylinder with patterned holes that achieved a pulse of between eight and 13 hertz, the same as the brain's alpha waves that are associated with creativity and dreaming.

People "view" the dream machine with their eyes closed, since the pulsating light stimulates the optical nerve and alters the brain's electrical oscillations. Many report seeing shapes, images and colours, and it can even cause hallucinations or, in much rarer cases, seizures. Gysin attempted to market it as a "drugless high," but it never really caught on.

The film is based on John Geiger's book Chapel Of Extreme Experience, and was written and directed by Nik Sheehan. It features appearances by Iggy Pop, Marianne Faithfull, Sonic Youth's Lee Ranaldo, Psychic TV's Genesis P-Orridge, Yeah Yeah Yeahs' Nick Zinner, DJ Spooky, poet John Giorno, filmmaker Kenneth Anger, artist/video director Floria Sigismondi and the late writer and iconoclast William S. Burroughs, who once called Gysin the only man he ever respected.

Though Gysin was a close friend of Rolling Stones guitarist Brian Jones, and Kurt Cobain owned a dream machine, neither are in the movie.

You can watch a preview of FLicKer on its website. The film opens in Toronto at The Bloor Cinema on Nov. 28 and at Vancouver's Vancity Theatre on Jan. 16.