Made in collaboration with British singer-songwriter Imogen Heap, the Mi.Mu glove turns the arms and hands of performers into musical instruments.
Eventually, Heap and Mi.Mu’s developers hope the glove and its software, which will be made open source, will reach a wide range of users. Mi.Mu works by capturing movement and hand gestures with analog bend sensors. That information is then sent wirelessly via the x-OSC [a wireless input-output board] board on its wrists to a computerSoftware developed for Mi.Mu enables performers to map that data to musical control signals and combine different gestures and movements to make more complex controls. The gloves can also be programmed to control third-party music production and editing software.
Other use cases for Mi.Mu include potentially allowing virtual reality hardware makers to insert realistic hand movements into environments. It can also be used to recognize sign language. An early backer recently used the glove to trigger the Village People song “YMCA” with American Sign Language. “We are very, very interested in engaging the maker community. I think that there is a barrier because of the high cost for a lot of people and so we could like to encourage people to get in touch with us even if they aren’t able to pledge the levels,” says Adrian Lausch, a member of Mi.Mu’s team. “We want to reduce the barriers to getting involved.”
