MADEONEARTH

Purrfect Relaxation

Feeling stressed? You need a visit to the studio of Duncan Laurie, a three-story structure perched on a gorgeous spit of land that overlooks Rhode Island’s Narragansett Bay. Laurie built the structure from mostly salvaged parts, and if the salt air and crashing waves outside don’t ease your mind, the studio’s Purr Generator surely will.

The Purr Generator is based on Radionics, an alternative technology founded by Dr. Albert Abrams in the early 1900s, on the observation that all matter emits radiation. Radionics surmises that a healthy person attains energetic equilibrium, while unhealthy people are essentially out of tune. The Purr Generator aims to restore balance with healing frequencies that neutralize energy blockage.

The Purr Generator attempts to replicate and amplify the sense of relaxation people experience while holding a purring cat. The device produces its main signal wave at a happy-feline frequency of approximately 25Hz, and directs it into the user as sound, physical vibrations, and “radionic intent,” bathing the body in good vibes. A second channel

generates a signal that’s close to the first but offset by a user-adjustable +/- 2Hz, which adds a dramatic spatial effect and a throbbing beat frequency.

To use the device, you lay on a bed suspended inside a cube-octahedron structure. A coneless magnetic coil under the pillow generates a tuned magnetic field, two Buttkicker-like transducers make the bed vibrate physically, and speakers attached to the geometric shell above and below the bed produce sound. A controller box at your right lets you tweak and mix the various waveforms, insert a radionic command, and add in white noise.

Laurie’s studio is filled with other fascinating equipment: a brainwave-to-MIDI converter, Faraday cages, and ultrasound microphones. But the Purr Generator is a popular favorite. Laurie has successfully used it to encourage bone healing for his own hip replacement, and rumor has it the Purr-cure also works for ailments ranging from back pain to depression. Purrfect!

—Steve Nalepa

Photograph by Todd Thille

>> Duncan Laurie: duncanlaurie.com

20 Make: Volume 09