Ian Sommerville (technician)

{{short description|British electronics technician and computer programmer}}

{{Use dmy dates|date=June 2017}}

{{Use British English|date=June 2017}}

File:P1210674 Paris VI rue Git-le-Coeur n9 ancien Beat hotel rwk.jpg]]

File:D. Woodard and W. S. Burroughs with Dreamachine, 1997.jpg and William S. Burroughs stand behind Dreamachine, circa 1997Chandarlapaty, R. (2019). "Woodard and Renewed Intellectual Possibilities", in Seeing the Beat Generation. Jefferson, NC: McFarland & Company. [https://books.google.com/books?id=bzOXDwAAQBAJ&pg=PT142&redir_esc=y#v=onepage&q&f=false pp. 142–146].{{rp|142–146}}]]

Ian Sommerville (June 3, 1940 – February 5, 1976)John Geiger, Chapel of Extreme Experience, page 90. was an electronics technician and computer programmer. He is primarily known through his association with William S. Burroughs's circle of Beat Generation figures, and lived at Paris's so-called "Beat Hotel" by 1960, when they were regulars there, becoming Burroughs's lover and "systems adviser".

Sommerville was educated at the King's School, Canterbury, and at Corpus Christi College, Cambridge. Around 1960, he programmed a random-sequence generator that Brion Gysin used in his cut-up technique. He and Gysin also collaborated in 1961 in developing the Dreamachine, a phonograph-driven stroboscope described as "the first art object to be seen with the eyes closed",Quoted on cover flap of Tuning in to the Multimedia Age. and intended to affect the viewer's brain alpha wave activity.

Sommerville and Burroughs made the 5-minute tape "Silver Smoke of Dreams" in the early 1960s, and later provided the basis for the quarter-hour audio "cut-up" and "K-9 Was in Combat with the Alien Mind-Screens" around 1965. The following year Sommerville also installed two Revox reel-to-reel machines for Paul McCartney in Ringo Starr's apartment at 34 Montagu Square, Marylebone, London, and recorded Burroughs on the machine.{{cite book|last=Miles|first=Barry|author-link=Barry Miles|title=Paul McCartney: Many Years from Now|year=1997|publisher=Henry Holt and Company|location=New York|isbn=0805052488|pages=238–243|chapter=6: Avant-Garde London|chapter-url=https://archive.org/details/paulmccartneyman0000mile_a0i4/page/238/mode/2up}}

Sommerville along with Gysin and Burroughs collaborated on Let The Mice In, published in 1973. Ed. Jan Herman. Vermont: Something Else Press, 1973. Burroughs' book My Education: A Book of Dreams, indeed largely composed of accounts of his dreams, includes dreams of talking with Sommerville.Gontarski, S. E., Burroughs Unbound: William S. Burroughs and the Performance of Writing (New York: Bloomsbury Academic, 2022), [https://books.google.com/books?id=R8VKEAAAQBAJ&pg=PT111&redir_esc=y#v=onepage&q&f=false pp. 111–113].{{rp|111–113}}

He died in a car accident on William Burroughs's birthday, 5 February 1976. Burroughs's biographer Barry Miles reports that Ian had sent Burroughs a telegram that day saying, "Happy birthday. Lots of love. No realisation. Ian". "No realisation" referred to Ian's unsuccessful search for a job as a computer programmer in America.{{cite book|last=Miles|first=Barry|author-link=Barry Miles|title=William S. Burroughs: A Life|year=2014|publisher=Weidenfeld & Nicolson|location=London|isbn=9780297867258|pages=520–521}}