In 1789 the German scientist and mystic Franz Mesmer discovered a way to record dreams using a needle attached to a feather which is affixed to a square of soft, pliable wax placed next to the bedside. If the dreamer’s dreams are especially strong the feather will rise and fall during the sleeper’s slumber thus making marks on the wax. It was not until the invention of film by the Lumiere brothers in Paris in 1895 that the technology existed to produce photographic moving images. Even then, there was no known technology to translate these wax marks into moving images. In the summer of 1843 utopian socialist Albert Brisbane met medium Andrew Jackson Davis at a demonstration of his clairvoyant powers in a sweaty, sticky barn near Poughkeepsie, New York. Albert Brisbane had always wanted to reunite with his hero, French philosopher Charles Fourier, whom he had met shortly before his death in 1837. Jackson informed Brisbane that he was able to reunite his friend with the spirit of his hero through a seance. The two held a sitting in Brisbane’s Batavia, New York home on a blustery night in the winter of 1843. The result was success. Fourier’s spirit was successfully resurrected. The following year Brisbane and others would spread Fourier’s message throughout the United States. As a result thousands would join the Fourierite movement and hundreds of utopian socialist communes, or “phalanxes,” based on Fourier’s program, known as “Association,” would be built throughout North America. Following Brisbane’s contact with Fourier’s spirit on that night in December of 1843, A. J. Davis informed Brisbane of Mesmer’s dream recording system and invited him to attempt it before retiring that night, remarking that, “It may produce interesting results.” In 1989 historians researching Spiritualism discovered the square of wax with the pock marks from Brisbane’s feather among Davis’ belongings. It was not until 2023 that a secret program by the Plex Digital Institute researching 3D scanning and artificial intelligence neural networks utility in developing digital spirit extraction technology discovered the way to translate Mesmer’s wax dream recordings into moving images. After several more months of research the team was able to discover how to extract audio from the wax squares as well. That same year I was working on research for my PhD dissertation on the history of Spiritualism. I discovered Brisbane’s wax dream recording among Davis’ things, today owned and archived by the Edgar Cayce Foundation. I was aware of the research being done at the Plex Digital Institute via a friend and former colleague who worked there and was a little bit too willing to divulge company secrets after a smoke and a few beers. When I contacted this anonymous friend I was surprised that they were willing to send me the source code for the program they were working on so I could try it on Brisbane’s wax square. After figuring out programming languages I never thought I would need to learn and using the 3D scanner at my university’s library, I was able to extract a video. The following film is the result of that process.
