A unique art experience has landed in Belfast as part of a UK-wide creative programme. Dreamachine is a powerful new immersive experience exploring the limitless potential of the human mind through closed eyes.
Following sold-out shows in Cardiff and London, Dreamachine has found a new home at the Carlisle Memorial Church in Belfast and will run until September 4. Created by Collective Act, it brings together Turner Prize-winning artists Assemble, Grammy and Mercury nominated composer Jon Hopkins, and a team of leading technologists, scientists and philosophers.
Dreamachine is commissioned and presented as part of UNBOXED: Creativity in the UK, a celebration of creativity taking place in 2022, and is free to experience. It takes its audiences on a kaleidoscopic, visual journey through flickering light and sound, all experienced through closed eyes.
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Jon Hopkins has composed a new score for the work in 360-degree spatial sound, creating a unique and enveloping sonic world. Dreamachine transforms Carlisle Memorial Church, one of the city’s most striking buildings, bringing it to life as a vibrant community space.
Built in the 1870s, the former church is the gateway to North Belfast. Owned and managed by Belfast Buildings Trust (BBT), the internationally recognised landmark sits at the heart of the trust’s work to connect people and place through cultural collaboration, community engagement and creative skills development.
Dreamachine promises to be an awe-inspiring spectacle in this unique space. The experience is inspired by an extraordinary but little-known 1959 invention by artist-inventor Brion Gysin. His experimental homemade device used flickering light to create vivid illusions, kaleidoscopic patterns and explosions of colour in the mind of the viewer.
Designed to be the ‘first artwork to be experienced with your eyes closed’, Gysin had a vision for his invention to replace the TV in every home in America. Instead of passive consumers of mass-produced media, viewers of the Dreamachine would create their own cinematic experiences.
Every experience of the Dreamachine will be completely individual. Research into these differing audience responses will shed unique light on how the human brain gives rise to our subjective ‘inner universe’, exploring the ways we each encounter the world, how this shapes our lives, and who we are.
For more information and to book, visit dreamachine.world.
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