A Way of Touching Sound

Abstract

A new way of converting music and sound into something Deaf people can see and touch has been developed by researchers at De Montfort University. They have created a sound sphere – and their physical model of what a piece of music looks like could open a wide variety of commercial uses, including for Deaf people. The surface of the sound sphere is covered in ridges running laterally around it, each representing a set of frequencies within the sound,with the lowest frequency (bass) at the bottom - the ‘south pole’ - and the high frequency (treble) at the top - the ‘north pole’. Together they thought up SoundScapes, the concept of translating sound from sound waves into a solid object.“We had the challenge of having to find a way to break up a sound file into various frequencies, basically high, mid and low tones,” explained Dr Pei.