In August 2025 for an event with Factory International + Venture Arts we collaborated with Weather Systems and created Collective Sound Space, where visitors could explore sound and technology through accessible, communal instruments. 

Billy and David of Weather Systems contributed a wall of magnetic synthesisers and a vocal trigger that played notes whenever the user opened their mouth, encouraging new ways of interaction that can respond to the smallest movements.

Visitors of all abilities engaged with curiosity, intuitively moving and collaborating with each other as they discovered sounds together. 

Many shared that they often face barriers to making music and participating in creative activities and felt there should be far more opportunities like this. From this event we have made many valuable connections and are using feedback from the community to help design new instruments and experiences. 

Will + James designed and built The Orbitone from the ground up, with accessibility at the heart of it. Featuring adjustable height for wheelchair users, headphones for people who are hard of hearing and touch-sensitive keyboard for those with limited mobility.

Working from Hackspace, a communal workshop in Manchester,  they constructed the wooden exterior, laser-cut the front panel, designed and 3D-printed the spinners and even used a metal lathe to make custom dowels. 

For the electronics we used Arduino microcontrollers to receive inputs from the keyboard, spinners and distance sensors and then used these signals to trigger sounds from Ableton and visuals from TouchDesigner. 

This was a multi-faceted design challenge which involved us learning a lot from the community at Hackspace and was built on a personal budget of around £100.