Eclectic songstress Imogen Heap is taking the lead on a Kickstarter that hopes to further develop advanced yet affordable music-mapping wearable tech, allowing the user to manipulate sounds with physical gestures.
Years in the making, the Mi.Mu Glove For Music is able to track hand orientation, how fingers are flexed or their direction, for example, mimicking striking a drum. Mapping these to different samples should lead to interesting prospects for creating and manipulating music with motion, capable of working in sync with third party music software like Ableton Live, Pro Tools, and Logic Pro. Mi.Mu's own software and hardware will be open source, so interested tinkerers are invited to 'hack' the devices for their own inventive applications.
The team counts a specially designed x-OSC circuit board as its 'secret weapon' - packed with pins for precise real-time gesture detection, it's capable of sending the signals over the air via Wi-Fi to any Wi-Fi enabled computer.

Specialists in their fields are collaborating on the project, such as conceptual leather and stretch materials designer Rachel Freire, tapping into the aesthetic as well as sonic potential. Although the team behind Mi.Mu acknowledge gestural data gloves have been on the scene for some time, Heap&Co claim there has never been a pair that specifically explore musical possibilities to this degree at this price tag and in such an accessible way.  
We're reminded of beat boxer Ryo Fujimoto, who recently worked with Funktronic Labs to produce SIGMA, a pair of gloves full of sensors that tracked heart rate, muscle movements and finger position, as well as image detection technology to convert hand and facial movements into audio and visual outputs.