About

A talented young musician is expelled from the Ghent Conservatory in Belgium for being “musically ungifted.” The reason? His increasingly controversial experiments with “new music” which ultimately lead him to build an entire robotic orchestra—conducted by sonar radar bouncing off the naked skin of a human conductor’s body.

Godfried Willem-Raes began creating musical performances so forward-thinking that he made enemies of nearly all his Conservatory professors. His experimental approach to music-making left him creating controversial work on the fringe of modern music culture.

Shortly after being expelled, he met Moniek Darge, a performance artist who was creating similarly innovative and challenging work. The two joined forces and began a career of wild inventions including a singing bicycle symphony, an installation in which participants create music by rolling over human-sized pillows of air, and an ensemble performing radar-controlled, body-movement-mapped compositions.

Recently, they’ve completed building an entire orchestra of larger-than-life robotic instruments that are conducted by a naked human dancer using Doppler sonar radar waves. Their Man & Machine Orchestra is unlike any other musical ensemble in the world and generates a wave of controversial responses as they take it on tour in Latvia and other stops throughout Europe.

This documentary follows the trajectory of their rebellion, their collaboration and the challenges of maintaining a creative identity within a romantic relationship.

Will the epic culmination of Godfried and Moniek’s life’s work together find acceptance in modern music culture? Or must they follow the path of other composers, viewed as outcasts by their contemporaries but appreciated as geniuses by future generations?