A British man is able to listen to Wi-Fi signals through his hearing aids and a hacked iPhone.
We're surrounded by unseen and unheard fields of sounds and information. One man in Britain is the exception. He has hearing aids enabling him to listen to Wi-Fi signals.
Frank Swain is a writer who has slowly been losing his hearing.
He teamed up with sound artist Daniel Jones to create Phantom Terrains, which allows Wi-Fi fields to be heard.
The men received a grant from innovation charity Nesta, based in the United Kingdom.
Phantom Terrains requires a hacked iPhone, allowing the Wi-Fi sensor within the device to collect data from surrounding signals.
From there, the data gets decoded and converted into sound patterns, which are heard through Swain's customized hearing aids. Without his iPhone, Swain can not hear Wi-Fi.
Specific details such as a signal's strength, the router name, its code and its distance are able to be heard as well, in the form of clicks or the repetition of a signal's ID.
In an article for New Scientist, Swain writes, “Unlike glasses, which simply bring the world into focus, digital hearing aids strive to recreate the soundscape, amplifying useful sound and suppressing noise...I am intrigued to see how far this editorialization of my hearing can be pushed. If I have to spend my life listening to an interpretative version of the world, what elements could I add?”
Swain and Jones hope their innovation leads to a new way of interpreting data, which can now include the kind we are unable to see or hear.
