UK: Hi-tech gloves changing the electronic music scene

A high-tech gloves is changing the electronic music scene in the United Kingdom. It’s a revolution in the music business by British music tech start-up MI.MU.

Sensors in the gloves measure movement in the hand, from the tiniest bend of a finger to the orientation of the wrist.

Thus freeing up electronic music artists, the start-up said.

“Fundamentally what we’re trying to do is to change the way that people make music. So this is all about giving musicians a different way to express themselves so that they can make new types of music and escape the confines that technology has put them in so it’s really about giving musicians a way to get out and do new things”, said Managing Director of MI.MU, Adam Stark.

The brain behind the gloves, Grammy Award-winning artist Imogen Heap, said the latest version of the gloves are designed to be more user friendly and affordable.

“The gloves contain sensors which measure the bend of the fingers and the orientation of the wrist and then they have electronics in them that send all of that data to a computer over wifi. Within the computer we have algorithms that can recognise different postures via machine learning like a fist or an open hand or a one finger point, really any posture you want to teach it. And then finally the next phase is that we have, our software lets the musician compose their own relationship between the gesture on the one hand and the sound on the other. So they can connect their body to the music in whichever way they want”, Stark added.

Dutch electronic musician Chagall van den Berg, performed with the gloves at its launch.

“Something that was new and interesting for me is the physical relationship that I now have with music. And I immediately when I made my first song with the gloves I immediately knew I had to think about my physical presence on stage and now choreography and also visualization of my music has become way more important than I ever could have imagined to be in my work”, he said.

The new gloves cost $ 3,200 per pair.

Reuters