The Flicker grew out of experiments by Conrad and Mario Montez.
During one conducted in March 1963, Jack Smith found hallucinatory patterns in the projector flicker.
Conrad was familiar with the effects of stroboscopic light from a physiology class at Harvard University.
By November 1964, Conrad had begun designing a flicker movie with "gradually lengthening alternate white & black areas on the film."
He made notes on how to expose progressively longer sections of film with black and white, ignoring the frame widths.

Conrad continued planning The Flicker with paper diagrams for several months.
He wanted to arrange the frames to create multiple frequencies while balancing the number of black and white frames.
He consulted William S. Burroughs's 1964 article "Points of Distinction Between Sedative and Consciousness-Expanding Drugs" while arranging the patterns.
In June 1965, Conrad tested various flicker speeds with his friend Lew Oliver.
They found that the strobe effect was most powerful between 6 and 16 Hz.
Oliver suggested using slightly longer durations for black frames, so Conrad used an extra black frame when constructing cycles of odd length.
The Flicker grew out of experiments by Conrad and Mario Montez. During one conducted in March 1963, Jack Smith found hallucinatory patterns in the projector flicker. Conrad was familiar with the effects of stroboscopic light from a physiology class at Harvard University. By November 1964, Conrad had begun designing a flicker movie with "gradually lengthening alternate white & black areas on the film." He made notes on how to expose progressively longer sections of film with black and white, ignoring the frame widths.
Conrad continued planning The Flicker with paper diagrams for several months. He wanted to arrange the frames to create multiple frequencies while balancing the number of black and white frames. He consulted William S. Burroughs's 1964 article "Points of Distinction Between Sedative and Consciousness-Expanding Drugs" while arranging the patterns. In June 1965, Conrad tested various flicker speeds with his friend Lew Oliver. They found that the strobe effect was most powerful between 6 and 16 Hz. Oliver suggested using slightly longer durations for black frames, so Conrad used an extra black frame when constructing cycles of odd length.
The Flicker