Sunday Synth Jam: This video captures a live performance of Fire, by Ray Li on SoundSpace Gloves.
The SoundSpace system, developed by a team headed by Ray Li and Michael Ndubuisi, uses electromagnetic sensors to track the exact position of the gloves in space. The motion of the musician’s hands can trigger prepared loops of sound, play different musical notes and add musical effects.
“We wanted to imagine sound as a tangible thing that you can hold between your hands,” says Li. “We’ve tried to create something that can basically do anything that you could do in a normal sound-editing computer program.”
Performance credits:
“Fire” performed by Ray Li on SoundSpace gloves, featuring vocals by Carolyn Rogers.
Programming work led by Michael Ndubuisi with Ameya Acharya, Richard Gold, Hon Wei Khor, and Akshay Sawhney. Videography and audio mastering by Devin Jameson. Motion-tracking made possible by Ascension Technology. Thanks to Cornell ECE and Cornell Music.
via Sycross
jump to 3 mins in
He really manhandled that dubstep near the end! As if dubstep was a large boulder of energy.
I would love for more performance options than a standard keyboard. Things even as simple as a midi guitar for my synths. Gloves are even cooler. Maybe a theremin with CV out would fit the bill?
this is utterly hilarious
This is one of the only glove performances, other than Imogen Heap’s, that really seems musical. So many times you see stuff like this and it sounds like the performer has never heard music before.
Also – the ‘synth face’ probably is part of it, but it seems like the gloves really give him the sense of ‘pushing’ the sound where he wants it and shaping it.
This is one of the better hand-control performances I’ve seen. That said, he still looked really rigid and stifled in his movements. I think the granularity of control actually limits the ability to be mobile and fluid, rather than enhances it.
Next step we’ll see is a bunch of glowing stuff attached to all the cables and hardware.