He designed and created a glove that will aid artists or rappers with a new medium of experiencing and expressing themselves in a different way, and to instil a sense of modernity to motivate them to start being more creative when it comes to incorporating technology in their work.
The PhD holder in Designing Pro-Social Games Creative technologist and hip-hop enthusiast Mark Mushiva (32) told Entertainment Now! that the idea of the glove was birthed when he noticed rappers constantly use their hands while rapping. 

 “I thought about how rappers use their hands to emphasise their lyrics and how hand signs/gestures are a big part of hip-hop subculture. Think about the image you get in your head when a rapper says ‘Yo!, check this out’. Rappers are not usually associated with musical instruments, so I started speculating about the kind of instrument a rapper would play. This led me to think about a glove instrument that could be played using the movement of fingers and hand gestures that were already prominent in hip-hop,” he recalled.
 He said his motive was to create something that exemplifies creative computing, and this was easy for him, as his passion lies in hip-hop and computer science. 

“I have a background in programming and physical computing (robotics), so it was just a matter of getting all the electronic components and hacking everything together for weeks without much sleep. And that took me about two months to build the prototype,” divulged Mushiva, who also hinted on the glove being a musical artefact for his upcoming album ‘Turbo Summation’. 
 Mushiva mentioned the glove would bring about a lot of change to the industry because of the lack of use of technology. “I hope the glove will show there is space to design new electronic instruments and musical software that we can use and sell within our own industries. We don’t employ new technologies in our sets because all the technology we use is standardised and imported from established music companies in Germany and the USA,” he stated.

 Mushiva said: “For rappers, the glove can completely replace the role of a DJ that provides musical background for a performance. It can trigger instrumentals and even allow the wearer to do live composition on stage. It can also be used to control 3D visuals in software like Max MSP, Processing, or the Unity game engine.”
 Even with the many advantages of the glove, it does have some drawbacks. It needs to power all the time and has to be networked with companion software running on a computer. 

While it gives you great opportunities to create and control a variety of digital outputs like sounds, videos and computer graphics, it doesn’t give you the same level of articulation as a traditional instrument, and it requires a lot of practice to be used well. 
I guess it is not so different from traditional instruments. 
For a clearer demonstration, head over to New Era’s social media handles to see the video.
– psiririka@nepc.com.na