Angelos Floros

Konstantinos Kiossis, Vasilis Mouzakitis, Angelos Floros, Dimitris Anestopoulos

Presented: 9th Panhellenic Conference Acoustics 2018, Hellenic Institute of Acoustics, University of Patras, October 8-9, 2018

An accessible system for making music with the body.

The platform exploits human kinesiology by combining laser beams with interfaces that pass through a microcontroller, producing or reproducing a wide range of musical events as a real MIDI controller. The player does not touch an instrument; they move through beams, and the movement becomes the note.

The research tested a range of sensing materials — metallic conductive substances, conductive pigments, and graphene-based films — and found strong responsiveness across all of them, which matters because it makes the platform buildable from cheap and available parts.

Three uses follow from that: as an educational resource, as an instrument for play, and as a tool for music therapy, where gesture rather than technique is what produces sound.