How Newcastle F.C.'s ‘sound shirt’ is transforming live sports for deaf fans

Developed by CuteCircuit, the innovative shirt uses advanced haptic technology to translate stadium sounds into immersive physical sensations.

Transcript

00:00So, we originally designed SoundShirt as a version of something called HugShirt, which

00:29allows you to send hugs to anyone, anywhere in the world.

00:33And after a few years, we got some requests from concert venues where they had said, we

00:39have some people that have deaf friends and they'd like to bring their friends, do you

00:42think that they could use the HugShirt to feel the music?

00:45And we thought, yeah, that sounds really possible, but we just need to do some software revisions.

00:50This was the launching of the SoundShirt for the enjoyment of music.

00:54And then we got a contact from Newcastle and CELA about a year ago, and they were asking,

01:00is there a way that we could also make the atmosphere of the stadium become more engaging

01:05for our deaf fans?

01:06And we thought, this is a perfect application of SoundShirt because it doesn't have to be

01:10applied just to music.

01:11It can be applied to anything like games or cinema, or as we see, sports events.

01:18Wherever there is fabric, you have sensation.

01:21We're literally mapping the whole stadium onto the shirt.

01:24Anything that's happening on the south side of the stadium, you feel it on the right-hand

01:28side, and anything on the north side of the stadium, you feel it on the left-hand side.

01:31So you can actually tell where activity is happening within the stadium just on what

01:35you're feeling in the shirt.

01:40We have some amazing feedback from all the children who tried it on the first game on

01:45April 13th, and their feedback was just amazing.

01:48And one of the things that they usually say is that they feel connected.

01:52And some of these children, they say, oh, this changed my life.

01:56I feel like I am part of the team.

01:59I am part of all the other fans, and we are just one.