14 DAY TRIAL // If you don't know about Imogen Heap, that's okay because you're about to learn all there is to know. Well, sort of. You see, she is a musician that also has a penchant for wearable technology.
And we do mean wearable. Back in 2010, she showed up at a public event wearing a Twitter Dress that displayed real-time, live Tweets from her fans.
Her taste in music is fairly unusual, some may even call it all over the place, but it's definitely unique. It is also the source of what might just be the greatest music-making wearable item yet.
You see, she wanted to change how music was created. Keyboards and software are all well and good, but few things beat actually going through the motions of a guitar, drum set or piano.
Imogen Heap doesn't really plan to learn all those instruments, but she did invent a glove that lets her control thousands of different sound options and create music just through gestures.
Well, the glove was invented by her and a team of engineers and designers who also wanted to spend more time away from their PCs while making music.
The result is called Mi.Mu gloves, which lack fingertip coverings and even leave much of the palm bare, but still have room to integrate accelerometers, gyroscopes and Wi-Fi support, plus, of course, haptic motors.
You might be tempted to think that a product like this is overly specialized and would have trouble selling people on it, and you would be correct.
In fact, the Kickstarter campaign is already over, and the team failed to amass the target sum of £200,000 / $337,000 / €243,000.
They decided to go forward with their plans anyway though, even if they start off working with smaller groups.
Anyway, the gloves can be colored in one of several colors (like black, blue, yellow) and you don't even need to stick to a single color if you like your garments eclectic and eye-catching.
“The Gloves are my dream come true, beautiful wearable-tech garments, that allow me to break the barrier between me: the musician, the creative and elements of my chosen computer software instruments, effects or workstation,” Heap says.
“I can now bring those sounds ‘out of the box’, gesturally, expressively and wirelessly where I’ve found other external controllers have failed.”
If things work out despite the Kickstarter failure, we might be seeing the Mi.Mu gloves in retail stores in a year or two.