Getting a Sense of Disney’s Eerie New Audio Technology
The English translation of the Japanese Ishin-Den-Shin is “what the mind thinks, the heart transmits.” Though, to Disney, it’s the finger that does the transmitting.
Developers at Disney Research, “launched in 2008 as an informal network of research labs,” have chosen the aforementioned Japanese saying as the name for its latest creation. BBC's Joe Miller reports:
The Ishin-Den-Shin technology uses a standard microphone to record audio and then converts it into an inaudible signal transmitted through the body of the person holding the microphone.
When they touch someone's earlobe, an organic speaker is formed and the sound becomes audible, effectively whispering a message into that person's ear.
Unless you’re pretty familiar with “modulated electrostatic fields,” you’re probably a little confused. This video, released by Disney Research, loosely explains the technology behind the project, but it also comes across a little creepy—thanks to the basement-like room in which it was filmed and the somewhat haunting music.
Surprisingly, this technology isn’t actually all that new; the concept has even been attributed to Beethoven. But it’s definitely on the rise, and developers are finding new ways every day to turn our bodies into methods of audio transmission.
Google Glass uses this same “bone conduction” transmission method, and the BBC points out that the technology “has previously been used in hearing aids, headphones for swimmers and runners, and devices used by magicians to make someone think they have had a message planted in their head” —which, in that case, is exactly what’s been done.
Consumers wearing a device like Google Glass shouldn’t be caught too off guard when they can suddenly hear something rattling through their bones. But German commuters would probably have appreciated a little warning before being shocked awake by an ad campaign played straight into their skulls.
