FR

“Our lives are becoming louder: traffic noise, machinery, disco music, MP3 players. In fact, we are hearing more and more, and yet less and less at the same time. Britain’s MRC Institute of Hearing Research estimates that by 2015 about 700 million people world wide will suffer from hearing impairment; and by 2025 that figure could be as high as 900 million. In 1995, fewer than 450 million people suffered from hearing loss. The reason for this growing problem is not just our life style, but also the fact that people are living longer.” Picture of the future – sound approach –  Siemens Fall 2010

Music transmitted through bones
Today, music and the deafness are two terms that we rarely use together. The musical culture is a taboo within the deaf community. Nevertheless the music is not insignificant for a deaf person, because the sound is a physical phenomenon therefore, it can be perceived by all the body and not only by the eardrum.

The music can be also causes the deafness. Today, people risk losing their hearing because of the use of earphones with loud sounds damaging the eardrum. Bones constitute an excellent sonorous medium through which the sound can reach the internal ear without necessarily going through the eardrum.
My project is made of a set of three special devices that use the bone conduction to communicate a sound informatin to the hear.

Form

It’s a family of three devices destined to listen music through bones. They are meant to be placed in contact with certain parts of the body. Each one use a specific bone of our body to bring the sound to the ear.
Those devices have a piece in synthesis ceramic, which has the function to transmit sonorous information to the bone tissue.

                             The headphone is worn like a traditional headphone,passing around

                             the cranium. It includes two rings in ceramic that bypass the ear to reach

                             the temporal bone.

                             The ring has to be grabbed in the hand with the help of two fingers.
                             The base includes a hourglass in ceramic that transmit the sound,
                             once placed close to the jaw or on the cranium.

                            The bracelet has to be worn like a traditional bracelet on the wrist.
                            It includes a lens in ceramic that has to be placed on the forearm bone
                           in order to transmit the sound.

                    The ceramic is choosing for its fidelity to preserve the richness of the sonorous frequencies.

Impact

The human body possesses an astonishing capacity for sonorous transmission. This phenomenon is largely due to the composition of our bony matter, which is at once both medium and amplifier of sound waves. It comes that our body is a truly sound box.

Those devices have several advantages:

-It allows the persons touched by a deafness of transmission to listen music through the internal ear.

-It allows our ear to perceive a big sonorous richness, because the bones are able to transmit sounds (extreme frequencies) that the air transmit with difficulty. Moreover, if the ear perceives a big range of sonorous frequencies, the elocution sees itself improved.

-It allows listening music individually without obstructing the eardrum therefore continuing to listen in the traditional way. This fact is especially useful when we are in situations like driving the bicycle. Moreover the music is audible only for the one that is using any of the device, because there is no aerial conduction.

-It allows the deafness prevention for the people who have done usage of traditional earphones.

La musique transmise par voies osseuse. 

Projet de fin d'études - ENSAV La Cambre - Master Design industriel