MotionComposer is an artistic and therapeutic tool that turns motion into music which was created by Robert Wechsler after collaboration with a range of therapists and artists among others. The company recently selected Genelec as its loudspeaker partner.

The idea of the MotionComposer came when Robert was contracted with a music therapist to create music for disabled children. This led to the concept of a device that would let everyone, regardless of ability, control sounds through movement.

As a result, the MotionComposer 3.0 was born which is based on passive stereovision with two cameras but no laser or IR projector to understand the positioning of a human body in a 3D environment. With this information the device can recognise even the smallest movements of the body, such as the blink of an eye, and convert them into a range of sounds, which are then reproduced via a pair of white Genelec 8020D active studio loudspeakers.

“There were several reasons we chose Genelec, the first is the quality of the sound,” Robert says.

“Some of the interactive musical environments we put people in are not playing music, but rather natural sounds, like rustling leaves or insects.

“We work with people with very limited movement and so a very small movement, like a blink of the eye, might make a small sound like a twig snapping. So we don’t just want speakers that play music, we want speakers that let you hear and wake your ears up to the full range of what sound can be.”

Robert adds that the Genelec speakers let users experience the smallest of detail that ears can hear.

“That is also therapeutically important because if you want people to focus on the sense of hearing, one very good way to do it is to get into the world of little delicate sounds – and that perks up your aural capacity. The dynamic range of the speaker is therefore very important, so you get the delicacy, but you also get quite a strong kick out of them,” he says.

On top of that, the aesthetic design and ethics of Genelec as a company drew Robert.