With motion-capturing tech, music director for New York’s Philharmonic explains his gestures.

The New York Times profiled Alan Gilbert, music director of the New York Philharmonic, and tracked his movements while he conducted with the help of tech from NYU Movement Lab. Turning the ethereal nature of music into kinesthetic reality is a challenge and that’s what makes the best conductors amazing performers. I liked this quote from Gilbert:

The way you let go of a note, the shape of the tail of the note, if you will, has to be managed and thought about and felt together.

What’s wonderful about the new face of games is our newfound love and interactions with bodily movement. That appreciation for form is understated and often pitched as a new piece of technology, but in reality, we’re turning abstraction fueled by play into something palpable and readable by machines. Fortunately, we have corrolaries elsewhere.

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[via NYT]