Inner city broad street heaving with pedestrians and wanton commerce, from which breaks an alley, appearing largely ignored. A train line sound barrier walls off one whole side of the way. Somewhat old red brick buildings, apartments also somewhat barricaded. A cat evades a clawing old woman. There must be some mistake, for I am in expectation of a theatre entrance. Baffled for a few moments, I loiter. Eventually I realize that nearby me is a single freshly printed poster, placed beneath an humble sign that I have managed to walk past without seeing. The sign reads ‘Sinchon Theatre’. Could this be the back exit? To the right is a set of closed narrow glass doors, and a typical dull stairwell. The address given says 4th floor. The street has no one. After an uncertain minute, I resolve to take the stairway. By now, the indications are that there is involvement of some Svankmajerian scheme, and that, for me, the show has already started. This place has ideas about what to do with me, and I am led on laughing. In the stairwell, which ends at a blocked doorway, someone is waiting. They hand me a ticket without asking my name.
 The attic door slides open from the inside, and someone ushers us to enter, myself and one other. Darkness confuses the extent of the space, low lighting reveals the room is occupied with various objects which I must cautiously pick my way through. There is no audience seating area, and someone gestures that I may choose one of a small number of cushions scattered amongst the stuff. What is expected of me since I am among it all?
 On the floor there is a circular tray-table, filled to its circumference with patches of moss. Next to this, a mini filing cabinet, one tray can clearly be seen to be packed with mosses. The mosses are of various hues, chloroplasts healthy enough. These plants exude an authoritative living silence, sonically matching their motionless posture. Quiet and still, yet animating the notion of a complex interdependent ecosystem. In this way they seem to create a central conceptual node. Covering the earth and fallen branches in Fiordland, or on the degraded concrete steps of the abandoned Yoseon market, mosses.
 A drop of water is heard to drop. Looking around, the attic has a layered spatial logic, some objects rest on the lowest floor level and others inhabit various higher stages. A ladder rises up. On its steps, a twig, a hand pump, and at the top a stone in a glass container. Hanging from the darkness above the stone an ice pack is thawing, intermittently releasing one droplet.
 The other guest is not looking around as I am, but is involved with his smartphone. I wonder if he is scanning to see whether any objects are communicating via bluetooth or wifi.
 On the floor is a case which I recognize as an old reel to reel tape recorder (?). On top of this a small arm begins to move itself, and drag a small object that is attached to it, scraping around the box lid languidly. This movement is inconstant. Time goes by. Now a single ping-pong ball drags itself from near some moss, drags itself across the floor, toward a polystyrene box some distance away, which when arriving there, it gently taps. Within this stop-motion reality, the sounds begin to impose themselves on me and I associate this situation to found sound appreciation and field recording activities.  The world anywhere seems to sound much like it should sound. To us, the sound at the lake edge, for instance, has its own coherent characteristic. The water action close by, the distant road across the water, birdlife passing. None of it is coordinated, the phenomena mostly exist independently, happening to appear at the same intersection time. A soundscape is a mass of disconnected sound events, made in our mind into a singularity. “I can sit for hours listening to an environment or situation and take pleasure and inspiration from it, ..it’s about allowing the environment to impose itself, to confound expectations, to remind us that we are only one species amongst many, always trespassing.”¹ Sustained listening can reveal clues to the wellbeing of a location.
 I become aware of two people moving within the theatre. One agent uses a spray bottle to the benefit of the mosses, moistening the atmosphere. Another agent interacts with an automatic arm. As it rotates he places objects in its path so as to elicit sound outcomes. He plays around with different objects and arrangements. It is interesting to observe and listen to this low level noise. There is some developing inter-relation between the plant-life, human agents, and the autonomous objects.
  By my count, 17 non-human autonomous agents were present. These automata are not uncommon things (ping-pong ball, metal sheet, fishing float etc), operating sporadically without excess decoration. The spectacle of humanoid automatons and dolls, and the alliance with facial/personality image fascination seen in consumer culture is, in this theatre, eschewed to the favour of a sonic focus. The things seem to be speaking for themselves. The mechanisms behind them remain discrete. I focus on the single ping-pong ball as it slowly climbs into the high canopy, there to spin around in the dark sky. Other hidden things emerge only as sound. A pounding, now soft, now harder, from inside the old polystyrene box. A scratching sound emitted from within a large fishing float. This ecology is maintained through much restraint; restraint regarding the choice and amount of objects, restraint around functioning, restraint around assertion of control.
 Music is not attempted or much referenced. Foregrounded is some relation between action and sound outcome, and co-influence of sound on action. Foregrounded is sound spreading, and acoustic layering in space. In this way I associate the experience of the 돌 깨는 잠, 숨 짓는 숲 with interesting aspects of improvised/speculative music experimentation ²
 At the uncertain peripheral boundary some shadowy events; a reed sound is pushed out, tapping against glass, something spinning, something dragging. Now an exterior door is open and daylight spills into the theatre. In all directions a window or door is pulled open and the situation expands. The bizarre energy of the gusty outdoor weather influences the, suddenly light filled, interior scene. Then the outside narrative is again denied by the contraction of all openings.
 Sounds grow more intent in the new fallen darkness. Metal sheets quiver. High pressure has built up slowly and is now dramatically released, hissing and projecting warmth and moisture into the air. The readymade automaton, a rice cooker, screams a rich broadband white noise with delicate variation. The sugars are ready for digestion, the atmosphere gradually settles as the silence of the moss is respected. The stairwell door spreads wide and without announcement it is indicated that, at this juncture, the story will continue outside the theatre. I move into the daylight and the confinement of the stairwell again. Without announcement a tray is presented. The small plain paper wrapped parcels say to Alice ‘Eat me’, ‘Drink me’. An awkward bulging parcel calls to me and I quickly grab it before the other guest has a chance, then I make off down the narrow stairs. The alley is empty. The guest emerges from the staircase, and hurries away ignoring me.
 Distancing has brought many things closer. Habitual normalized pleasures have been walled up. In this case where I attended the show without conversing with anyone (except myself), perhaps the force of the work, perhaps the integrity of the experience, was free from contamination by obligatory, distracting social ritual. The performance talked to me about improvisation, interaction, and possibilities for higher cooperation between myriad kinds of sentient agents, amid a densely inhabited resource space. As with the world in general, in the theatre the actions of automatons and living beings were closely interleaved.
 Later, in the safety of a busy public place I check the parcel. The wrapper is a scrawled note that I struggle to read, noticing mostly that the word ‘sound’ appears repeatedly in the message. It contained a wild orange ping-pong ball, cut open and fitted onto nylon line.

^{Jez Riley French, Listening >Sound Art> Cinematic Distortion ; https://on-chorus.com/ ; 2020 ↩
recent examples: a) 중간자 Mes(otr)on, Jin Sangtae&Inkyung Kim, June 22nd 2019 Dongseung Art Centre, Seoul, b) Ryoko Akama, Dotolim concert series 134, february 2020. ↩}