SENSES x Opal: Dreamscapes.
Our third exhibition of Senses was a collaboration with Opal a spatial audio collective ran by Noelle Nurdin and AIX Live Salford. As the first week of September 2025 marked the end of the summer, the sleeping of nature was our guide in Senses 3’s exploration of dreams, liminal spaces, fading memories, the light of summer escaping our fingertips as our eyes closed for the autumn.
Hosted at Mayfield Depot’s Supermassive Manchester, this was our most immersive and provoking Senses yet. Alongside the Opal and Supermassive team this event invited audiences to fall into a liminal state.
Moving through this evolving environment, audiences encountered a curation of electronic artists, visual performances, spoken word and dance – a collective exploration of the threshold between waking and dreaming.
One of humanity’s enduring mysteries is the origin of dreams. Across the ancient world they were seen as messages from the divine, omens, or voices of ancestors reaching out. In the book of Exodus, Joseph interprets Pharaoh’s visions of seven fed cows and seven lean ones (and the same with ears of grain), foretelling seven years of plenty followed by seven years of famine.
Today, Cognitive psychologists view dreams as the conscious mind interpreting ‘noise’ from the unconscious mind.
As the unconscious mind categorises data and memories from the waking day, the conscious mind picks up pieces of this ‘noise’, feelings, images and places and sketches together a rough story in order to help us practice situations that might happen in our waking life.
It’s as if the conscious brain is picking up little bits of data and turning them into a simulation.
What is in the space between waking and sleeping.
The Dream of Saint Ursula” – Vittore Carpaccio (1495)
Brain imaging comparison showing metabolic activity during different sleep stages. During REM sleep, the visual cortex and other sensory regions show increased activity. This corresponds to the sleeper experiencing dreams that often feel like real environments they can see, touch, and feel
Activation–Synthesis Hypothesis of Dreams (Hobson & McCarley, 1977).
Current cognitive model of how dreams occur.
Sketch from the Red Book, Carl Jung’s personal journal of dreams, imaginal dialogues, and active-imagination sessions… Looks a bit like senses x Opal?
Mapping Memories, Modelling Minds.
The cognitive theory for dreams is a good model as to how dreams arise but it has its problems.
For example, in dreams, you can experience whole landscapes, cities, faces, or even music that feel as detailed as waking life. How does the brain has enough processing power, enough storage & realtime rendering capabilities to achieve this?
There’s no evidence that the brain stores “complete worlds” in memory like a hard drive. The real mystery is how a relatively small number of neurons—about 86 billion—can encode experiences that feel virtually limitless in detail and scope.
Even more puzzling is how the brain generates these experiences in real time, seamlessly reconstructing rich scenes as we perceive them. One idea is that it does this by combining fragments—like “trees,” “sky,” and “hills”—on the spot, using patterns and rules that produce complex, coherent imagery, similar to how fractals generate infinite patterns from simple rules.
2D Mandelbrot Set using colour as Z dimension - as an example of how simple rules produce complex coherent world generation.
Vast, endless landscapes can be generated digitally with enormous computational resources. Yet, when we sleep, the brain generates equally immersive dream environments — with less than 1/1000th of the processing power.
TECHNOLOGY.
Dreamworlds of data…
The worlds we create online with softwares like blender, touch designer and other AV softwares hold in them parallels to the dream world we enter in sleep - these vast landscapes to get lost in is a theme that guides our new events partner Nøelle in her artistic practice.
Nøelle runs Opal, and she has had a fascination in creating digital worlds for people to experience her music.
She’s soon to launch the first 9.1 spatial audio live-show in Fortnite and experiments in motion reactivity within immersive performance settings using the MiMu Gloves and Flowfal devices.
The Senses team had the pleasure of working with her on this incredible collaboration, only with her influence could we bring the possibilities of the digital dreamscape to the waking world for this event.
You can view Nøelle’s work: here
Noelle & Louis SG from Supermassive working on touch designer DMX patches – these controlled the hanging ceiling orbs in Supermassive’s ballroom.
Supermassive’s Ballroom.
We were also joined by Louis Schamroth-Green, creative director of Supermassive.
Supermassive is an interactive art experience in Manchester, currently exhibiting their light art playground. It is still open to the public in Manchester’s Mayfield Depot until November 2025.
The creativity and imagination of this space was a dream in creating an immersive liminal space for an imaginative audience.
When being introduced to supermassive’s Smokey Ballroom, we were met by over 100 LED & haze suspended orbs that bathed the black space in an hypnotising display.
You can follow Supermassive and their installations here: www.supermassive.uk
Arif & Matt from Senses Exploring Supermassive’s Ballroom
Sound: 360 Spatial Audio
Sound of course, was another aspect of Senses 3 x Opal’s immersive goal.
For this we were joined by Bernie Steer from microcosmaudio.com who has spent many years on curating technology in 360 spatial sound.
He created the 6 point surround sound system that the entire venue in every corner was sonically engulfed. Six-point spatial audio creates immersive 3D sound using six strategically positioned audio channels: front left, front right, center, rear left, rear right, and a subwoofer.
Noelle and Paltin worked on L-ISA Studio working up to the event, a system that encodes positional information into audio tracks, allowing sounds to be precisely placed and moved through three-dimensional space around the listener.
The result generated realistic spatial cues that made Senses x Opals audience perceive sounds as coming from specific directions and distances, a surround sound experience usually put aside for movies, games, and virtual reality.
You can follow Bernie’s work at microcosmaudio.com
Noelle, Louie & Bernie installing the 6 point 360 Spatial audio System.
Finally, Senses x Opal was lucky enough to meet Emmanuel Biard the week before the event.
Emmanuel is the architect behind the "Longinus" the breathtaking light-beam rig touring across Europe.
Based on the Roman solider who pierced Jesus' side at the Crucifixion, the rig was a marvel in lighting technology.
Taking the principals of light to converge the projections via fresnel lenses, this rig was able to warp light completely parallel – a novelty for local UK audiences.
This chance encounter with a genius engineer was something Noelle, Myself and the team will always be remember, the Longinus and tied together all the themes of Senses x Opal Dreamscapes. The result were beams of transcendent photons, through Supermassive’s smoke installation it was almost as though you could see the silver linings of phantasmagoria, a vision on the horizon, a miracle in the distance.
You can follow Emmanuel’s work here
The Longinus.
PERFORMANCES.
‘Falling deeper, head first into the nothingness…’
Senses co-founder Matt Needham from Studio Ende, took on the role of directing something much different on this Senses. On the theme of dreams, this artist wrote and debuted the premiere of Ossify. Ossify is a 4 part kinetic performance and narrative piece that unfolded throughout the event.
The piece centres on a world where two individuals are lost in a liminal space, looking for meaning and trying to understand the modern world if all memory was lost from it.
Pieces of the modern world, the golden arches of a fast food restaurant, a discarded e-cigarrate or a billboard for an iPhone became pieces of a puzzle that two lonely souls wondering in a world with complete amnesia must make senses of. Sleep as their only refuge, the boundaries between the world thats real and world they can remember are gone.
The piece was recorded with long time friend of Senses, Sophia Hariri & spoken word artist Teni. Their duel performance as long lost souls had unimaginable chemistry.
On the night, the kinetic piece was performed by dancers Nina Mccar and Beatrice montefusco with choreography help by Debbie Bandara throughout the weeks leading up to Senses x Opal.
The beautiful piece punctuated the night before each musical act and provided audiences with a guiding hand through the night.
Sophia, Teni & Matt (Studio Ende) Recording Ossify.
Music.
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Days like Television, on the themes of flew in to the UK from Berlin Germany for Senses x Opal.
Days Like Television is the captivating musical project of Berlin-based experimental artist Daniel Bryden, originating from Newcastle upon Tyne, UK.
Bryden's work with Days Like Television is characterised by the use of dissociated sound sources and fragmented textures, creating a delicate balance between intensity and melodic, nostalgic beauty. He describes his sound as creating "immersive sonic soundscapes, delicately balancing a viscerally intense heaviness with a melodic and nostalgic beauty".
His work draws the listener into a sonic encounter shaped by absence, erosion, and the aesthetics of disappearance, resisting easy resolution.
It was great to hear his original compositions and have him play at senses as a long time friend of the Senses.
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Following, Indigo Jung set took some of his ambient work from Militia, Bleep and his productions over the summer of 2025 to move the dancefloor from sitting to standing. His gradual build in tempo and groove shifted the energy upwards as we ascended into the second part of the night.
The Manchester-based producer showcased his signature approach of creative sampling and ear-bending arrangements weaving together his underground afro and minimal house aesthetic with precisely timed builds that transformed contemplative moments into irresistible dance-floor momentum.
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As Days like television had put us into a deep sleep and Jung had passed the threshold into the dream world, it was time for audiences to explore this expanding landscape. Paltin, provided a mind-warping tour of sound.
As the second half of senses began - Paltin, A modular synth-jazz solo act weaving Eastern European rhythms, foley, and live improvisation into a lush, experimental sonic tapestry. He’s performed at Band on the Wall, Underbank and Carlton Club.
Moving through, jazz numbers, electronic organic sounds and even glitch dissolved drum and bass, the audience were fully into their sleep cycle.
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Finally, Noelle graced the stage for a half an hour set of angelic, layered and frenetic beauty.
Her vocals reverberated in 360 spatial audio, while her a visuals and immersive AV technology transformed the venue into the final cycle in our dreamscape, her DMX and projections of child-like wonder did create a mesmerising finale, closing the night.
This performance captured her signature use of cutting-edge technology in spatial audio, and touch designer technology, leaving the audience suspended between reality and digital euphoria in a truly boundary-pushing electronic experience.
Whats the last dream you remember?
Thank you to everyone who attended Senses x Opal dreamscapes, it was a pleasure to share this event with you all.
Through every portal through every footstep and every fragmented memory we hope you woke filled with inspiration, wonder and awe at our amazing artists and genius technologists.
From the opening ambient landscapes to the final spatial audio crescendos, we hope you immersed yourself in a sea of sonic textures and visual poetry and we hope you made connections that you can revisit every time you sleep.
The boundaries between consciousness and subconsciousness blurred as we journeyed together through realms where technology metthe ethereal.
Thank you & never stop dreaming.
Until we meet again
- ID Jung.
