Brion Gysin - Dream Machine

Born in 1916 in Taplow, Buckinghamshire, Brion Gysin had many skills including being a poet, a painter, writer and performance artist. After graduating from school early, Gysin moved to Paris and took an open course at the Sorbonne called La Civilisation Francaise and began to make literary and artistic contacts with others. He developed a surrealist viewpoint of art and is widely known for his 'cut-up technique' alone with his friend William S. Burroughs. The cut-up technique discovery happened accidentally in the 1950s when Gysin was cutting through newspapers and noticed how the different layers put together offered "interesting juxtapositions of text and image". 
The Dreamachine was shortly after created and is a flicker machine used to work the mind as individuals sit before it with their eyes closed and let the color and light create images in their minds. It was an attempt to create a hallucinatory experience based off an a similar experience Gysin had in his lifetime.