Vibrating vests allow deaf people to feel music

DW (English)

How can people who are deaf or hard of hearing experience music? The team at Not Impossible Labs have created a vest with vibrating modules that reproduce individual sounds.

Transcript

00:00Feel the beat and enjoy the concert, whether you hear it or experience it another way.

00:06Because this concert is not just about the sound, it features an innovative piece of tech,

00:12which allows deaf or hard of hearing people to feel the music on their skin.

00:18Mick Ebeling and his team at Not Impossible Labs have developed the backpack

00:23that transforms the concert experience using vibrations.

00:30Replicating the hearing experience so that the skin is the eardrum now gave people who were deaf

00:36the ability to feel in perfect synchronicity those vibrations.

00:40And what was odd and what was fun is that whether you could hear if you were deaf

00:45or if you could hear and you were wearing the Music Not Impossible system, it was a euphoric experience.

00:52People were like, they're looking at each other like, oh my god, this is amazing.

00:55So how did they come up with it?

00:57The idea of the project was quite simple.

01:05Right now, the way that you can hear me is that my voice goes through the air,

01:11it goes through two little holes in the side of your head,

01:13and then it creates a vibration on your eardrum that sends a signal to the brain.

01:18So we said, well, what if there was a different way to get that signal,

01:22those vibrations to your brain, and so we chose the skin.

01:26Until now, the only way to really experience vibrations like these was to get right up close to the speakers.

01:33But while the vibrations up front might be powerful,

01:36differentiating between the instruments and vocals, well, that's a different matter.

01:41In the development stage, the team experimented with vibration motors from cell phones, which were strapped onto a belt.

01:49But here too, the vibration lacked in nuance.

01:52It was only when deaf singer Mandy Harvey came on board that that changed.

01:57She helped technical developer Daniel Belker fine tune the system.

02:02So when Daniel communicated with me about Music Not Impossible,

02:07he had limited channels, but all of the vibrations were the same.

02:11What he was missing was intensity, difference of vibrations.

02:17The vest is truly an experience for everyone who can try it.

02:23Today, the system is equipped with 28 motors for torso, hands and feet.

02:29Each of these sends unique signals, meaning that every instrument feels completely different.

02:38Be it a roll of the drums or a strum of the guitar,

02:41and the adjustable suit weighs just a few kilos for a musical experience that anyone can feel.

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