Friday, 28th August 2015: It’s rock show time in the small Finnish town of Oulu. The rapt crowd cheers when Kereel ‘Your Daddy’ Blumenkrants bounds onto the stage in skin-tight finery, convincing as a 1980s metalhead. The music begins with a blast of distortion, giving way to a blistering solo, and the gawky Russian struts and shimmies without missing a note. But has he left his guitar in the dressing room? No, it’s the Air Guitar World Championships. Playing fresh air with meticulous dexterity, his ecstatic pantomime is pure catharsis and his body transforms into the instrument, itself becoming literally and figuratively immaterial. Electric soap dispensers, virtual keyboards, 3D Minecraft, and in-car controls: gesture-based
interaction is not a new technology. However, its scope is expanding, with numerous phones and tablets offering inbuilt airgesture modes. A camera, supplemented by bodymapping algorithms, reads and interprets human gestures and instantaneously translates them into digital information. This form of touchless touch might soon supersede conventional input devices such as mice, keyboards and touchscreens. Having already moved from the physical button to the digital interface, we are now touching the impalpable space above the screen. Making contact with physical devices is no longer necessary when we can use the world around us as digital interface, orchestrating its response by flailing in thin air.