It’s a slow day at work and I’m really tired, but for some reason, I can’t stop tracking this white glove. What the hell am I talking about?

Well, this website, White Glove Tracking, makes use of people on the internet to find every instance of Michael Jackson’s white glove in all 10,060 frames of video from his nationally televised performance of Billy Jean.

There are 10,060 frames of video in Michael Jackson’s 5 min 34 sec nationally televised landmark performance of Billy Jean. The White Glove Tracking project (W.G.T.) is an effort to isolate just the white glove from this moment in pop-culture history. Rather then write unnecessarily complex code to find the glove in every frame of the video I am asking for the assistance of 10,060 individual internet users to simply click and drag a box around the glove in one frame. In the end this data will be shared freely for all to download, visualize, and use as an input into other digital systems.

The project makes use of “crowd sourcing“, a term defined by giving a specific task to a large and undefined group of people. It is entirely voluntary, but it’s also oddly rewarding to know that you are doing a small part to further a large project (at least that’s how I feel).

But yeah, feel free to join in on the project. It won’t be long before all 10,060 frames are finished. Better jump in soon!

Here’s the video that the frames are taken from.