Saturday Synth Porn: Imogen Heap demos her awesome (x-IMU-based) musical gloves, on Dara O Briain’s Science Club on BBC2, Dec 31, 2012.
Heap’s concept for the gloves was that they would “take on the personality of a musical companion, not trying to do take the place of what a keyboard or computer is good for but finding and celebrating those things that the gloves do better: expressive and immediate control of sounds recording and played through gesture.”
Imogen Heap’s Musical Gloves
The system is made up of three parts: The Gloves, armbands and a harness.
The harness holds all the wireless audio and bluetooth gear to ‘speak’ to Imogen’s setup off stage. The wires from her gloves are threaded through some ‘crin’ tubing and ‘armbands’ to stop them from dangling and up into the harness.
Details are available at Heap’s site.
The video also includes an edited performance by Heap of her track Me The Machine. A longer performance is on BBC i-player.
via matrixsynth
I <3 Immi.
This is the first time I’ve seen somebody use MIDI gloves in a really musical way. Nice!
I remember Steve Hogarth of Marillion playing MIDI gloves (as a keyboard on his arm, a pole, speakers, etc.) on the tour for their 1989 Season’s End album.
Thanks for posting this. It wasn’t available on the UK site. Heap is a fearless talent.
Those are heaps musical gloves.
BTW, if anyone reading this hasn’t checked out Imogen Heap’s music, you really owe it to yourself to check out her music. It is really beautiful. Listen to “Hide & Seek”, or cuts from Ellipse to get an idea.
She writes beautiful songs, and uses sounds and sound-design as an embellishment to really strongly crafted music. She has always used cutting edge technology, but she doesn’t forsake great songwriting or get distracted by her gizmos. She has also used social media to involve her audience in lovely ways.