Re-Up : In celebration of the life of musician / entertainer Michael Jackson, World Famous Design Junkies presents to you what we believe is one of the greatest internet-based tributes ever conceived: the White Glove Tracking project. This project takes Michael Jackson’s Motown 25th Anniversary performance of Billie Jean, tracks the most important part of it: the white glove, and turns it into data. Once the glove is tracked, the data can be utilized in an infinite amount of different ways. This project was initiated in 2007 and contributions continue today.

Michael Jackson’s spirit: rest in peace; your ghost in the machine will never be allowed to rest. The white glove forever!

On May 4th, 2007, we asked internet users to help isolate Michael Jackson’s white glove in all 10,060 frames of his nationally televised landmark performance of Billy Jean. 72 hours later 125,000 gloves had been located. wgt_data_v1.txt (listed below) is the culmination of data collected. It is released here for all to download and use as an input into any digital system. Just as the data was gathered collectively it is our hope that it will be visualized collectively. Please email links to your apps, video, source code, and/or screen shots to evan[at]eyebeam[dot]org. Work will be exhibited in an online gallery and depending on popularity and interest potentially in a forthcoming physical gallery exhibition as well. Huge thanks to everyone that contributed to the data collection.

For more information please check out the top data contributers, the about page, and the original data entry applet (no longer in use). Example source code for getting started can be downloaded below (available as Processing and Open Frameworks projects). – White Glove Tracking is an open source project initiated by Evan Roth and Ben Engebreth with support from the Rhizome Commissions Program and the Eyebeam OpenLab. Contacts: evan (at) eyebeam.org and ben.engebreth (at) gmail.com

Take a peek at the several iterations of the glove, and remember the wild times of Michael Jackson. Also remember Bubbles the monkey, Michael Jackson’s appearance on Men in Black II, and his awesome Neverland Garage Sale.

Fire Glove by Jon LaLoutre

Giant White Glove by Tim Knapen

White Glove Flocking by David Wicks

White Glove Tracking by Turbo Connard

Height = Speed by Zach Lieberman

Paul Pfeiffer Tribute by Zach Lieberman

White Globe MHI by Evan Roth

Shapely: by Jung-Hoon Seo

Stretchy by Jung-Hoon Seo

Slinky by Jung-Hoon Seo

MJ RIP! And of course remember to visitWhite Glove Tracking if you’d like to make your own! And note, this post is part of the celebritarianism category.