SOMA·X is the result of research born on stage.

It did not originate from the idea of developing a new technology, but from the need to allow the performer's body to control light, sound and imagery in real time without wearable devices, markers or any element that could limit freedom of movement and expression.

During the development of the performance From Eurydike's Point of View, in February 2026, this need became the starting point for a new research path.

The objective was clear: to allow the body to drive digital systems without interfering with freedom of movement, expressive gesture, or stage presence.

The research

The available tools proved too invasive, too rigid, and unsuitable for live performance. From this awareness emerged a research project that, from the outset, combined artistic practice and technological development to imagine a new relationship between the body and digital systems through computer vision, markerless body tracking, and artificial intelligence applied to the performing arts.

The first experiments took place within MTNT – Music Theatre and New Technologies Towards a New Paradigm in Opera Studies and Performance, funded through Italy's PNRR – NextGenerationEU, with the participation of the Academy of Fine Arts of Verona. In this context, artistic practice and technological development continuously informed one another, turning every rehearsal into a research laboratory.

The foundation

What initially began as a collection of custom tools developed to solve the needs of a single production gradually revealed a broader architecture: a modular system capable of reading the moving body, transforming it into real-time data, and making it available to other software and devices through open protocols, placing technology at the service of creativity rather than imposing constraints upon it.

From Eurydike's Point of View became the first testing ground and the first validation. Every design decision pursued a single objective: to keep the body completely free while making it intelligible to the machine, allowing movement to become living material for light, sound, imagery, and space.

SOMA·X is not the end point of that research, but its foundation.

What had been created for a single production has become an open platform capable of evolving alongside artists, artworks, creative languages, and the questions yet to come.

From the very beginning, the goal was never to build a closed tool, but to create an open, modular, and extensible infrastructure capable of growing through research, dialogue, and collaboration among artists, developers, and institutions.