Chicago's Lyric will be the first opera company anywhere to offer wearable haptic technology for deaf and hard-of-hearing patrons.
Control software is shown for the Lyric Opera’s SoundShirt, a garment that delivers haptic stimulation through real-time vibrations which produces sonic stimulation of musical instruments for the hearing impaired on Sept. 19, 2023.
Starting with its Oct. 1 performance of “Flying Dutchman,” Lyric will provide SoundShirts to up to 10 audience members at select shows this season, most of them matinees. Users will feel, physically, what’s happening in the score — a breakthrough for deaf and hard-of-hearing audiences, and a first for an opera company anywhere in the world.
Designed by London-based firm CuteCircuit, the SoundShirt looks a bit like a chic, lightweight athletic jacket. Embedded within the fabric are 16 haptic actuators — ”fancy speak for little motors,” says Brad Dunn, Lyric’s senior director of digital initiatives. Those actuators correspond to one microphone above the stage and seven placed near various instrumental sections in Lyric’s orchestra pit.
“It’s going to vary from show to show. I can see us playing with it a little bit more with it as we go,” Dunn says. “These go through a dry-cleaning process after each , so we want to keep them in good shape for as long as possible,” Dunn says.similar wearable actuatorsBut Lyric is the first company to offer such accommodations for multiple productions.
As Dunn and accessibility advocates stress, when it comes to touch-based tech, the goal is not to replicate a hearing person’s experience but to create a completely new one. In that sense, the SoundShirt augments what we all
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