It's a little after 5pm in mid-December. Sitting in an upstairs room at her home just outside of London, Imogen Heap thanks her mum for bringing the two of us a drink, laughs, and asks me, "Is this the strangest interview you've ever done?" I smile at the weeks-old newborn Heap is currently feeding as we talk. "Yeah, it's definitely a new one for me," I reply.
I have visited at the start of a very personal weekend Heap has organised for the 15 collaborators who each paid £5,000 to acquire a pair of her mi.mu "musical gloves". They have travelled across the world to her country barn -- now converted into a studio-cum-workshop-cum-startup space -- to spend 48 hours with their own gloves for the first time and to collaborate with each other, as well as Heap, in order to discover new applications for the technology.
For Heap, the first gloves -- which received some initial funding from the University of West England -- meant a new way to create and perform music. Hand actions, arm waves and other gestures are translated via the gloves into commands for computer software to manipulate her live voice or other sounds. They also featured on her latest album Sparks in the song Me, The Machine, not to mention in a live WIRED 2012 performance.
But this weekend is about seeing what else they can do. "It's a real kind of celebratory moment for all of us," Heap says. "We've really been trying to get to this point where they're in people's hands and the software is good enough for people to navigate without us standing over them."
The "we" she's referring to is the seven-person team that has been developing the mi.mu gloves for months -- the electronics, the design of the gloves themselves, the software that translates their movement into usable computer data. It's this team that has also been hand-crafting the gloves for each of the 15 collaborators to collect during their visit.
Baby sufficiently nourished, we walk the hundred-or-so feet down to the barn behind her house. Behind some large, colourful, sliding barn doors is a sports hall-sized space that at first glance looks like an interactive science museum. There are computer stations in one corner, tables with team members putting the finishing touches on some gloves, a make-shift indoor campsite for collaborators to bunk down in, tables and chairs with food, and a bar.
"These 15 collaborators are going to do my job and take away the gloves [to test and highlight issues] and we can really make this
'ultra glove' for next year," Heap says. "I think it's going to move really fast and I can't wait to see what people do with them.
"This weekend we're gong to work with these guys from 10am to 6pm Saturday and Sunday and tell them to think up a project. We'll help them do that [and] get used to the gloves and the software."
For one person spending the weekend in the barn, the development of the mi.mu gloves means more to him than a way to create new instrumental ideas -- but a way to maintain and hone the skills he has already developed. "I've got cerebral palsy, which affects my hand movement and has deteriorated quite a bit over the last couple of years," says guitarist, pianist and music studio owner Kris Halpin (pictured, right). "I've been releasing records for ages [but] my relationship with those instruments has changed dramatically over the last couple of years."
Halpin is a charismatic man dressed in torn blue jeans, a white T-shirt and scarf, who "just turned the wrong side of 30". He noticed that although his condition had affected his movement for many years, it was only over the last two years that it had begun affecting his hands to the extent that performing and recording albums was problematic. "A year ago I was pretty stressed about the whole thing," he says. "I felt gigs were suffering. I've just recorded a new acoustic EP and I've documented the process, as I've struggled to make records; my hands just don't let me play like I used to. Then this comes along," he says of the mi.mu gloves, "and I think, 'wow, this might just be the answer.'
As my abilities change it might be irrelevant -- the gloves might just take that problem away."
It is the flexibility -- literally and figuratively -- of the system Heap and her team have developed for the gloves that have inspired Halpin's confidence. Even tiny gestures of a finger, or raising of a wrist, or subtle fist clench, or even making the heavy metal "devil horns" sign, can send a unique signal to a computer or other piece of hardware. If Halpin can no longer physically manipulate an aspect of his instruments, a gesture or held position of the gloves may be able to fill that gap and allow performance and creativity to continue. "I can't fit my hand round the piano," he says, "but I could fit the gloves around the disability."
Halpin is working with Gawain Hewitt, associate national manager for R&D at Drake Music. Providing the funding as one of the 15 collaborators, Drake Music is a charity that aims to make music accessible for disabled people and children. "I've a big concern about the level of thought and effort [currently] going into new musical technologies for disabled people," says Hewitt. "If you compare the potential and the actual technology being developed everywhere, it's an exciting time. But compared to what's developed for people with special needs there's a chasm."
It's this chasm that Hewitt, Drake Music and Halpin are hoping to help fill, in part, with the research and learning garnered by their collaboration with the mi.mu project. And it's this very sort of collaboration Heap wanted the weekend at her home to kickstart. "I found it rather emotional seeing so many people having fun and playing with them," says Heap in January. "In some ways a little sad as a mum would feel perhaps, when their kid moves out of home, but excited for them to go and have fun out In the big wide world! "It's important for us as a team, as it's really our passion, to keep working with individuals on their artistic pursuits and experiments."
The next step for Heap and the mi.mu team is to design for manufacture in order to dramatically reduce the price tag of mass-produced gloves. But she is also keen to release do-it-yourself kits for people to build their gloves at home from their component parts. "If anyone is interested in helping us realise any of this, please get in touch," she says.
This article was originally published by WIRED UK
