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.
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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.