Chair rekindles love of music for deaf
Researchers at Ryerson have created a chair that allows individuals who are deaf or hard of hearing to feel sound through vibrations.
“I felt like a door was opened for me, that another way for me to experience the world was to sit in the Emoti-Chair,” said Ellen Hibbard, a culture and communications PhD candidate who has been deaf since birth.
The chair allows her mind to wander, while she enjoys the music, she said. Hibbard said she was surprised when she experienced flashbacks, triggered by the vibrations of the music. “I asked hearing people if they experience triggers of memory or emotions with music, and they looked at me and said, ‘Of course,’” Hibbard said.
Last week, a prototype of the Emoti-Chair was put on display at the Ontario Science Centre as part of the On Thin Ice: Youth Respond to International Polar Year exhibit. A live concert was held and the chair was hooked up to the musicians’ instruments, so guests could try out the chair.
Speakers, located in the back and bottom of the Emoti-chair, act as vibrators and make the music into a tactile experience. There are air jets at head level and actuators move the entire chair so it shakes.
Research on the chair began in January, 2007 and will continue for an additional two years, with funding from the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada and a grant from the Canada Council. Ultimately, the creators of the Emoti-Chair would like to see it installed in movie theatres and concert venues.
Deborah Fels, an associate professor of information technology management, and her colleague, Graham Smith, originally created the concept of the chair.
It allows people who have lost their sense of hearing to experience the joy of music again, Fels explained. “People who are hard of hearing tend to want to have access to music. When they lose access to music, it is unfortunate, and they miss it,” she said.
Fels worked with other members of the Centre for Learning Technologies and a team from the Science of Music, Auditory Research and Technology (SMART) Lab to create the Emoti-Chair.
The SMART Lab helped develop ways to optimally translate sound into vibrations in the Emoti-Chair.
In the early stages of research, Frank Russo, director of SMART Lab, and his students took a prototype of the chair to the Bob Rumball Centre for the Deaf. People sitting in the chair listened to music and identified the emotion conveyed through the music by pointing to a picture of a face portraying a matching expression.
“It seemed that deaf people were able to identify the emotions that a hearing person would. The people became really animated, they would just dance in the chair and many of these people have been deaf from birth,” Russo said. |
