Singer Imogen Heap will use a pair of high-tech musical gloves in her performance at the TED conference in Edinburgh tomorrow, manipulating sound using nothing but hand gestures. The gloves were developed by Tom Mitchell, a lecturer in music systems at the University of the West of England, Bristol and allow Heap to mix her music live on stage.
“The gestures lend themselves to the processes that they control,” explains Mitchell. “For example, a grasping gesture is used to sample voice and instruments, panning is achieved by pointing in the direction that the sound should be positioned, and filtering is achieved by closing the hands as if you are smothering the sound.”
The gloves contain sensors that monitor the motion of the wearer’s finger joints, along with a gyroscope and accelerator to track the orientation of the wearer’s hands in space and microphones attached to the wrist for sound capture. All the data is then streamed to a laptop for analysis and audio processing.
(via One Per Cent: Imogen Heap’s musical gloves mix sounds on the fly)
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