Imogen Heap's musical gloves

My first thought was the powerglove… and how the patents involved were subsequently licensed for prohibitive per-device fees that killed gestural interfaces for decades. Not sure how she’s avoiding those patents, but I’ve been waiting for this future for quite some time!

2 Likes

Laurie Anderson approves!

She is so nice!

I’m reminded of Onyx Ashanti’s Beatjazz.

Check out his Beatjazz system, which is open source.

Extra points to Imogen for showing us her unique elliptical house and her play room. We talk about Makerspaces, and Imogen is blessed with one I’d give a pinky knuckle to grok its functions and form.

I’d love to see Imogen at least give a nod to Laetitia Sonami, who I believe early commenters have also mentioned. Laetitia’s work with “The Lady’s Glove”, represents a lot of what Ms. Heap is building on here. Incidentally, Laetitia also developed her work at STEIM, but she began the work in 1991. Her glove developed into a beautiful instrument that included much of the same technology being used here–embedded in an elegant mesh opera glove, but her music is much more avant grade than IH’s so she’s more known in fine art, experimental music, and sound art circles. If anyone cares to look into her, here’s the page on her site that recounts the history of The Lady’s Glove: http://www.sonami.net/works/ladys-glove/
And there’s also a documentary recently released about her called ‘‘The Ear Goes to the Sound: The Work of Laetitia Sonami’’, by filmmaker Renetta Sitoy, and her wiki page is here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laetitia_Sonami .

1 Like

Oh, and after listening to a particular CD again, before I forget:

Could she please get in touch with Pat Metheny? He’s got a little something that should accept MIDI data.

This topic was automatically closed after 5 days. New replies are no longer allowed.