Synopsis

The Throbbing Gristle Experience  -installation        (No. 8 Heeren Street Heritage Centre)
           
Housed in a small semi-transparent white tent made from bed-sheets, the artist’s remake of Brion Gysin’s low-tech ‘Dream Machine’ offers the grand possibility of a shift in perception and consciousness. Downstairs, the cowboy-clad artist offers brewed coffee, chili beans and conversation…contemporary shamanmeets Broke Back Mountain.

'The Throbbing Gristle Experience' was born out of a special installation and performance event created for the 2010 Village Festival, which occurred beneath the mature elm trees of The Edinburgh Gardens in Melbourne, Australia.

The original work was titled ‘Broke Bike Mountain‘ and featured a sculptural mountain of broken bicycles (created from over eighty old bikes) arranged to allow visitors to walk underneath the structure, which acted as the gateway to a fully-functioning camp site - complete with a camp fire, hand-made tent, straw bale seating and live cowboy!

An important part of the original work was small tent structure containing a special light device known as a Dreamachine¹.  I referred to this structure component of the installation as ‘The Throbbing Gristle Experience’, in reference to the English industrial, avant-garde music and visual arts group, whose charismatic leader, Genesis P-Orridge, has written widely and enthusiastically about the Dreamachine, and it's creator Brion Gysin.

I'm fascinated by the idea of using the simplest of technologies to create a device that has the potential to allow viewers to experience a shift of perception or consciousness. The Dreamachine offers this possibility.

The small, white tent (in which the Dreamachine is housed) represents many things to me from the transitory nature of experience and existence to a place of refuge and respite from maddening crowds. Its shining luminescence symbolizes hope, tranquility and peace.

The more adventurous visitor is encouraged to enter the white tent and “view” the dreamachine with their eyes closed: the pulsating light stimulates the optical nerve and alters the brain’s electrical oscillations. The user experiences increasingly bright, complex patterns of colour behind their closed eyelids. The patterns become shapes and symbols, swirling around, until the user feels surrounded by colours. It is claimed that using a dreamachine allows one to enter a hypnagogic state. This experience may sometimes be quite intense, but to escape from it, one needs to only open one’s eyes.²

I will make myself available for the duration of the life of this installation, and I will be inviting visitors to join me for a cup of coffee and chili beans to share thoughts and experiences that may arise from their experience.  

Trevor Flinn September, 2011

1. A Dreamachine is a stroboscopic flicker device that uses alpha waves in the 8-16 Hz range to produce a change of consciousness in receptive viewers.

This fascinating device that can be easily created using a cylinder with slits cut in the sides. The cylinder is placed on a record turntable and rotated at 78 revolutions per minute. A light source is suspended in the centre of the cylinder and the rotation speed allows the light to come out from the holes at a constant frequency of between 8 and 13 pulses per second. This frequency range corresponds to alpha waves, electrical oscillations normally present in the human brain while relaxing.

A dreamachine may be dangerous for people with photosensitive epilepsy or other nervous disorders. It is thought that one out of 10,000 adults will experience a seizure while viewing the device; about twice as many children will have a similar ill effect.

2.http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dreamachine

Biography
Trevor graduated from the Victorian College of the Arts, Melbourne in 2004, majoring in sculpture. Soon after he moved back to his home town of Dunkeld in Western Victoria and  currently works across sculpture, performance and video, all centered on  people telling fascinating stories. Humor is a recurrent and important element in Trevor’s work, as are beautiful images for which he is on the constant look out for.

In 2007 Trevor received a Next Wave Kick Start Grant, which he used to transform Dunkeld’s derelict railway station into a thriving artist run space which now operates as Off the Rails Gallery (www.offtherailsgallery.blogspot.com) a not-for-profit artist-run initiative, managed by a small group of Dunkeld artists. The space is progressively developing and encourages local artists to exhibit their work as well as offering the community the opportunity to participate in special exhibitions and workshops.

Other previous work of Trevor’s includes ‘Film that will end in Death’, a multi-screen video installation about people involved in risky activities, which featured as part of the 2010 Next Wave Festival, and ‘The Puma, the Stranger and the Mountain’, a series of short videos about a group of pumas who form a punk rock band, complete with substance abuse issues and limited musical ability, called ‘The Meat Eaters’.