Lyric Opera of Chicago to Offer SoundShirt

During the 2023-24 season, Chicago’s Lyric Opera will be piloting the SoundShirt, a new system designed to allow audience members, especially those who are deaf or hard of hearing, to experience live performances enhanced by real-time vibrations. The pilot program begins on Oct. 1 with Wagner’s The Flying Dutchman, and will be tested at five additional performances: Jenufa on Nov. 12; The Daughter of the Regiment on Nov. 16; Cinderella on Jan. 21; Champion on Jan. 31 and Feb. 3; and Aida: on March 17.

Invented and produced by CuteCircuit, a London-based wearable-technology fashion brand, the Soundshirt relies on a process known as “haptic actuation.” Microphones capture and transform live music into a closed-circuit digital audio feed, which is transformed in turn by computer into touch data that is then broadcast wirelessly to the SoundShirts. Different instruments and voices map to different locations across the body. The current software was refined through extensive testing at Lyric during the 2022-23 season.

A limited number of SoundShirts will be available for use this upcoming season for the pilot program, which is presented in partnership with the City of Chicago’s Mayor’s Office for People with Disabilities.

The Lyric claims that it is the first opera company in the world to experiment with this technology, but a similar wearable vest that translates audio data into vibrations has been developed by California- Not Impossible Labs and piloted at the Mostly Mozart Festival in New York and at concerts in the U.K., Brazil, Japan, and Australia.