A sensory room that reacts to sound

I designed and built three sound-reactive software programs for the Montano Assistive Technology Center in Connecticut, USA. The state-of-the-art multi-sensory environment provides sensory experiences to help children and adults with physical and cognitive disabilities.

The voice reactive technology creates beautiful abstract patterns of light – from vibrant blocks of colour to fireflies dancing in a forest. By creating sounds with different volume and pitch, participants can see the relationship between the visual effects and the sounds they produce.

Each software system empowers participants and encourages expression, stimulating vision, hearing, cognition and communication. The interactive enables the Montano Assistive Technology Center to offer many complimentary therapies to aid learning in many individuals, such as those with cerebral palsy and autism.

I worked closely with music therapist Phoebe Tucker to design a multi-purpose interactive that could be used as a part of many different complimentary therapies. The new sensory room is a fantastic resource for delivering music therapy to the local community.

What happened next?

The software I designed was so popular that after a lot more research and development, I took all the ideas and things that I had learnt and piled it into a product called Visual Voice Pro. The software I developed for the Montano Assistive Technology centre became the starting point for a much larger suit of sound and voice reactive software!

If you have enjoyed this, why not check out these other interesting things?