Dezeen Music Project: Imogen Heap has released a music video for her track Me The Machine, composed and performed using the Mi.Mu gloves she developed to create music with hand gestures.
Each Mi.Mu gesture-control glove, which Heap is currently trying to put into production via funding raised through Kickstarter, contains a range of sensors that track the position, direction and velocity of the wearer's hand, as well as the degree of bend in their fingers and the distance between them.
As she explains in the video interview we published last month, Heap maps movements made with the gloves to musical functions such as drum sounds or bass notes, changes of pitch, arpeggios and filters, allowing her to create music by moving her hands rather than by playing a keyboard or pressing buttons.
"Me The Machine is a song that I wrote for the gloves and with the gloves," Heap told Dezeen when we visited her at her home studio. "I wrote it and recorded it and performed it with the gloves. It was kind of a test to see if we could do it."
The gloves are not limited to making music and can be used to interact with a computer in other ways. In the video, Heap mimes how she controls the drums and bass line to the track when performing with the gloves live, but also used the gloves to create and manipulate the imagery in the video.
"For a lot of the video you see me actually manipulating the visuals with the gloves," she explained. "I'm drawing onto a screen made of gauze in front of me. You can see me actually drawing in real time."
Heap is currently trying to raise £200,000 via crowd-funding website Kickstarter to develop and produce a limited production run of Mi.Mu gloves.
Me The Machine will feature on Heap's forthcoming album Sparks.