The design of a new musical glove: a live performance approach

A live performance using novel technologies is a highly complex system in which anthropological, sociological, psychological, musicological and technical issues are heavily involved. The New Interfaces for Musical Expression (NIME) community has presented a new approach to music performance often heavily technologically mediated while outputting a great deal of new digital instruments since 2001. Within this broad research field, important issues such as hardware interface design, mapping strategies, skilled performance and compositional approaches have been considered. Many NIME practitioners have explored the development of `gestural controllers' in the hope of achieving natural and intimate interaction while also designing clear interactions between performer's gesture and sound from an audience perspective. This thesis expands on this notion through the consideration of the possibilities for enhancing the audience engagement and understanding of the underlaying structures and mechanics of the live performance. To this end, a newly developed data glove named Pointing-at is developed. A number of live performances in which the data glove is used are presented and discussed. The analysis of both the theoretical and practical elements of the research formed the basis for the development of an approach to the design of nuanced gestural performative actions that are both visually and sonically legible to audience members. In that regard, the use of metaphors that are coherent to the theme of the performance have been found to be a useful tool that can enhance both the performer and audience experience of the live performance.