glove controller

I built my glove controller while in residence at IRCAM, as part of the "Real-Time Systems" team. Originally conceived of as a data glove to wear while I play clarinet and saxophone (it was designed in a particular way to make this possible), I later turned to using it on its own. As a performance instrument I found it to be incredibly expressive -- something akin to the sensation of singing.

The glove is worn on the right hand, and uses Force-Sensitive-Resistors (FSRs) on the fingertips, bend sensors, and an accelerometer to sense finger, hand, and arm gesture. Analog processing is done by a pair of custom-built analog-to-digital interfaces, and software mapping is done via MAX running on a Macintosh.

An infrared sensor is used as an additional component of the system. This device is manipulated by the left hand, wearing another glove with reflective material attached. The left hand is used to control macro-behavior of the glove-controller mappings; together the two gloves create a multi-modal controller where large-scale structure is controlled by the left hand, and fine detail is controlled by the right.

Typical performance gestures include fingertip pressure, rotation of the hand/arm, and various full-arm gestures ranging in speed and energy. Pieces are performed, and in a sense choreographed, by the motions required to initiate and control the sound material.

The pieces I have composed for the glove controller, such as Continuities (1997) and COLLIDE (2002), typically consist of a series of "scenes." These comprise various mapping configurations between gesture and sound. I am free to determine the duration of each scene; however, the succession of the scenes is fixed.

For an example of the glove controller in action, see the COLLIDE page on this site.