CJ Walsh – Looking Outwards 10 – Computer Music

For this week’s Looking Outwards I decided to focus on Imogen Heap, a British singer-songwriter and audio engineer. I really admire her work as an artist because she has taken her musical vision beyond just creating music but has experimented with new ways in which to create. One of the projects she is best known for is the Mi Mu gloves, which use mapping technology to transfer the movement of the hands into musical compositions. In the video above, Heap explains many of the different uses for the gloves and the different movements that create changes in pitch, filter of the sound, and many other elements. I find the product to be really interesting and it adds a really cool dynamic to the way an artist can perform on stage. Heap has talked a lot about the fact that she hated having to have so much equipment on stage in order to create the kind of music she wanted to perform. The gloves give her the ability to not be locked down in a location and create a music experience that envelops both sound and movement.

While I dont know too much about the details of the programming, the gloves use a network of bendable sensors that track the movement of the hand and fingers. This in addition to create an invisible map of the users space allows the software to recognize shifts in motion and attribute those to different music elements and sound qualities.

Overall I just find this to be a really intriguing project. I think that Heap’s vision toward the future of music and performance is really interesting because I dont think its something we see from a lot of musical artists. This enables the user to create a wide variety of new musical experiences and its really interesting to see how work like this will develop into the future.

Website: https://mimugloves.com