14 DAY TRIAL // What is known as the first rock concert ever for the hearing-impaired will be staged in Toronto, Canada, on March 5, NME has announced. The concert will be possible thanks to Ryerson University’s Alternative Sensory Information Displays (ASID) project and its Emoti-Chair, which allows a deaf person to enjoy music as a physical experience.
The concert, reportedly the first ever in history, will see acts like Fox Jaws, The Dufraines and Hollywood Swank, among many others, take to the stage to offer the audience a truly one-in-a-lifetime type of experience. According to the aforementioned source, this unique event has been made possible with the help of the Ryerson University’s Centre of Learning Technology, the Science of Music, Auditory Research and Technology Lab and, of course, the Emoti-Chair.
The Emoti-Chair is a special type of chair that captures the sound frequencies of music and translates them into sensory stimuli. Thus, the “listeners” will have their chairs vibrate, move and even blast air depending on what kind of music is being played. However, the concert will not be based entirely on the chair, as captioning, interpreters and music visualization will also be part of the show.
So far, no other details on the upcoming concert have yet been made available, but, given the fact that such a beautiful initiative has finally been made possible, chances are more info on it will emerge soon enough.
“I grew up listening to Madonna and watching her music videos. By reading the words via closed captioning and watching her face I could see the emotions,” Hibbard, a PhD candidate in the Communications and Culture program at Ryerson University who researches at the Centre for Learning Technologies, says of the Emoti-Chair. “Now with the Emoti-Chair, I don’t have to try so hard to read the words, I can just experience the music.”