When thinking about artists who push the boundaries of sound and technology, two names stand out for me: Imogen Heap and Atau Tanaka. While they come from very different musical worlds, both use technology in innovative ways to turn the body into a key part of the music-making or “sound-sculpting” process. Their work continues to inspire my own creative journey as a sound artist and creative technologist.

Imogen Heap’s Tech-Driven Sound Art: Few artists are as closely linked with music technology as Imogen Heap. Her breakout single “Hide and Seek” (2005) featured innovative vocoder harmonies, and she later co-developed the Mi.Mu gloves – wearable controllers that let her sculpt music through hand gestures. Heap conceived these gloves to “break free from traditional instruments” and use her body as a musical interface, enhancing how she composes and performs. Projects like Me The Machine (2012) were written specifically for the gloves, highlighting her vision of seamlessly fusing tech with songwriting. This approach has made her a pioneer in live electronic performance, always ahead of the curve in exploring new tools.

Atau Tanaka’s Embodied Performance: In contrast, Atau Tanaka emerged from the avant-garde art scene, turning the performer’s body into the instrument. His early piece Kagami (1991) used the BioMuse (an EMG biosensor interface) to translate muscle tension in his forearms into MIDI sound controls. Tanaka co-founded Sensorband in 1993 – a trio using bodily sensors as musical interfaces – demonstrating a radically physical approach to music-making. His performances, often without traditional instruments, use biosensors and gestures to generate and shape sound in real time, exemplifying “corporeal” musical interaction. I find their approaches particularly innovative, especially considering that the digital technologies available at the time were far less advanced than what we have today.

Heap and Tanaka chart different paths – one integrating tech into electro-pop songwriting, the other rooted in experimental sound art – yet both align in pushing musical boundaries with technology. Heap’s expressive, song-centric use of tech shows how digital tools can serve emotion and melody, whereas Tanaka’s work explores raw human movement and physiology as music. As an aspiring sound artist, I’m inspired by Heap’s inventive interfaces (like the Mi.Mu gloves) that invite audience-friendly performance, and by Tanaka’s body-as-instrument ethos, which encourages me to treat physical gesture as creative media. Together, their careers demonstrate that innovation in sound art arises when technology and human touch converge – a lesson that continually shapes my own creative practice.