Tuned Senses

BOZAR Music Opening Night Festival 2015 with CREW, the BOHOstring players conducted by David Ramael, and with Christophe De Boeck.

A live ‘immersive’ concert with live and processed music in rooms adjacent to the live hall at the Bozar Rotunda in Brussels. In an installation context devised by CREW and Chantalla Pleiter listeners are invited to lie down on tilt-beds equipped with transducers. The experiment converts an initial loss of control into a heightened awareness of the body and gives the visitor a physical experience of the music.

‘In the Bertouille Rotunda, the strings of the BOHO Players and a soloist from the Queen Elisabeth Music Chapel perform spiritual compositions that probe the essence of life. Perhaps surrender is the best answer to these overwhelming existential questions, one might feel, all the more so as one listens to this music lying down. When the "bed" tilts to a horizontal position, you hear a fascinating distortion of the music and you can physically feel the vibrations of the sound, which are amplified and transmitted through your body. This bodily experience of the music certainly won't leave you unmoved, in any sense of the word.’
In a second room sheets of metal were suspended, vibrating with processed layers of the live music. Christoph De Boeck provided the transducer concept on steel and did the live processing, routing live and processed music to multiple speaker and transducer setups.

*It was a re-enactment of immersive experiments CREW carried out for 'Crash’ (2004). This experiment served an attempt in 2003 to avoid possible motion sickness. It had a remarkable outcome that it made the disturbed coordination between the senses feel very enjoyable.