Chapel of Extreme Experience - John Geiger

Subtitled 'A short history of stroboscopic light and the dream machine'. John Geiger's fascinating and informative history of the use of flicker in scientific and visionary research traces this phenomenon from the first recorded observations in 1823 by Jan E. Purkinje through psychedelic and hallucinogenic research of the middle of the century up to the work of the triumverate of Brion Gysin, William Burroughs and Ian Sommerville and onto recent(ish) flicker related incidents with the Pokemon cartoon. The focus of the book lies with the above three psychonauts and their use and development of flicker and in particular their 'Dream Machine'.

Geigers fascinating book offers an insight into an overlooked part of the legacy Gysin, the very marginal Sommerville (even though it was he who designed and built it) and Burroughs have left us. The 'dream machine' was very much Gysin's baby and so it's through him that the tale unfolds chronicling his many attempts to popularise and commercially exploit the machine although frequent sidetrips are made to check in on those researchers in the field whose circle wasn't quite so hip, such as W. Grey Walter and John Smythies and then over time to include other avant-artists like Tony Conrad and Genesis P. Orridge.

Within this book Geiger has achieved that most difficult of balances, that of the scientific and the artistic. Neither side of the research is neglected, an impressive feat in a book so short, and indeed it is stressed how interlinked they were. A case of marginal figures within each of their respective disciplines finding kindred spirits outside of those disciplines. Geiger has produced what is an enjoyable, if slightly dry, read that in years to come, when the rest of the world catches up with the ideas of the book's core-figures, will be regarded as essential reading.