If, like many, you’re reading this while still in a bit of a post-NYE daze, just soldiering on at your computer sort of trying to look busy, consider gazing into the Dreamachine—something that, unlike, say Twitter or LadBible’s picture of a weird devil-goat-baby, will genuinely alter your mind. This iteration is Haroon Mirza’s, and is on show as part of his brilliant exhibition Waves and Forms at Southampton’s John Hansard gallery until 11 January. The work is based on the original invention of the same name by writer William S Burroughs and artist Brion Gysin, which was unveiled in 1979 and took the form of an illuminated, spinning perforated paper tube. The idea is that when people sit, eyes shut, in front of the machine, the light waves emitted at between eight and thirteen Hertz mimic the brain’s alpha waves and induce a state of meditative relaxation. Mirza’s version is like staring into a void and seeing everything in the entire universe, all at once—it’s hard to put into words, but its changing forms and colours offer a genuinely hallucinatory, lysergic-leaning experience.
