Exploring stages of Perception In Sound Bed a lone audience member lies down on a platform at the centre of the action. They close their eyes. Speakers are gently placed at their head and feet. A soundscape, suggesting cinematic narratives begins playing. As the piece progresses, performers move the platform and the speakers through the space. The audience member is completely passive as they are moved, passing through different ‘sound rooms’, becoming part of the dance that is unfolding. The audience is invited to view this dance from the periphery of the space. The movement of the dancers and speakers acts as a mode of live sound mixing, physicalising the machinery of special effects. The basic concept of Sound Bed explores in a live performance, a version of the narrative, temporal and spatial leaps available to cinematic editing. Participating in Sound Bed is a twin experience; the audience observing the piece on the edge of the space are guided through a deconstruction of perception, while for the audience member at the centre of the installation, the visual construct is hidden, so that the acoustic presences invite a more emotive, less analytical, response. The patient, detailed experience of sound is rarely available to us. Sound Bed lets us sink into the acoustic, allowing a sensitivity to emerge without the crushing distraction of the visual. Via the mixing of soundscapes into spatial, physically executed pathways, Sound Bed transforms an acoustic process into something both visible and physical. Likewise, movement is almost always experienced as an active, unexamined phenomenon. We move through space; we watch others move through space. The dancers dance; the audience observes. Images of astronauts experiencing weightlessness are fascinating for us because they represent movement without force; motion without effort. While we constantly search for “moving experiences”, we are so rarely truly passive, allowing ourselves to simply be moved. Sound Bed sets up a space of trust where we are able to let ourselves let go. It allows for a non- direct, yet completely tactile, contact between the performer and the audience, and is a powerfully and emotive experience. Participant Quote December 2011, Brussels “…the experience of imagining myself as someone else. Transplanting myself into the body of a ‘filmic’ being, a phantasy world. The challenge of relying on certain senses requires concentration, but then suddenly you are there, in it…a provocation of the imagination.”