It’s only fitting that the ethereal Imogen Heap devise something as ethereal as herself to change the face of music. Her gestural music ware, now in its crowd-funding stages on Kickstarter, is a pair of motion-sensor gloves named Mi.Mu (not to be confused with Miu Miu) that allows artists to produce music and manipulate sound with nothing more than wave of their hands. After four years of research and development with the “nerd underworld” on the high-tech gloves, Heap has crowd-sourced slightly over a fourth of the investment required to enable a generation of musical (g)lovers.
The wireless Mi.Mu gloves eliminate the constriction of a guitar strap or piano seat, enabling an artist to mix their own vocals and play multiple virtual instruments simultaneously, both live and in the studio. The official website reads, “Artists and other users will be able to use their motion to guide computer-based digital creations. The musical gloves are both an instrument and a controller in effect, designed to connect the user fluidity with gear [that] performers usually use, such as Ableton.” Mi.Mu users can literally take the mixing into their own hands, producing music with absolute precision in an organic way.
In the wearable-tech era of Google glass and Oculus Rift, the Mi.Mu gloves are a revolutionary concept which allow users themselves to become the baton or controller, whichever genre they prefer. As the legendary songstress says, “It just feels like the time of the musician hunched behind their laptop is long gone. You can do so much with your body, you can use your body as a musical instrument.” Watch her demonstrate the power of the gloves below on her song The Machine – if this doesn’t floor you, nothing probably ever will.
The Bangin Beats 