Imogen Heap demonstrates her amazing new musical gloves at WIRED 2012. “Using a unique gestural vocabulary, motion data-capture systems, and user interfaces to parameter functions developed by Imogen Heap and her team, artists and other users will be able to use their motion to guide computer-based digital creations. The Musical Gloves are both an instrument and a controller in effect, designed to connect the user fluidly with gear performers usually use, such as Ableton – think Minority Report for musicians brought to you by the DIY/maker revolution.”
Inspired when Kelly Snook invited her to the MIT Media Lab in 2009 and she tried on Elly Jessop’s musical glove, she and her creative team, headed by Snook, began developing a glove that would enable “more expressive control of the tech in studio and on stage, something I could wear and create sound fluidly with, more organically, humanly somehow.”
The gloves offer an integrated, transcendent experience for the live performer, wherein she uses her motion, gesture, and body to create and control electronic music in an organic process, almost “touching” the notes, as if they were visible around her and her bodily movement, her physical interactions, literally performed the music.