Tokyo-based industrial artist Aliceffekt’s album Telekinetic went live this week, and it’s already getting international coverage for how it was made – it’s the first known album release created with the Leap Motion Controller. By translating hand movements and gestures into retro-futuristic sounds, Aliceffekt created the full 20-minute ambient album using the Leap Motion Controller as his main instrument. He recently used the Leap Motion Controller in a live performance at Tokyo Indie Dance Party, which you can see here:
Besides performing as DJ Aliceffekt in Tokyo clubs, Devine Lu Linvega is a digital artist who wears many hats – building apps, designing games, and even inventing a synthetic AI language. Throughout his entire body of work, he keeps one foot in the future and always wants to evolve. During his DJ shows, he found himself getting bored and frustrated.
“I’ve always liked the idea of conducting music, weaving the music in midair,” he says. “This was impossible with the previous tools I had tried. I never really understood the appeal of twisting knobs of laptop shows. I have been scratching my head for a while, trying to get out of this boring image of the modern day music programmer.”
Using the Leap Motion Controller and Ableton Live, Lu Linvega created his own program that would allow him to control the range of a variety of sounds – triggering clips by counting the number of fingers being held out. By moving in three dimensions and controlling tones and clips with simple movements and gestures, he created Telekinetic. Check out this brief clip of his experimental app in action:
However, Lu Linvega says Telekinetic is only a small experiment; it’s a prelude to something much bigger – a whole new way for him to perform and create.
“I want to try something more ambitious for my next shows – involving visuals. I want to have this draw pictures in midair, as well as music. May it be Kinect or Leap Motion or something else, this way of performing – with motion control – is now the only way I shall conduct Aliceffekt shows in the future.”
Telekinetic is available for free download on Lu Linvega’s website, and he also shared his Leap Motion project files for other developers on GitHub. What do you think of Telekinetic – and where will Leap Motion music go next?