An invited lecture titled "Seeing with Sound for the Blind: Is it Vision?" was given at the
VSPA conference on Consciousness
at the University of Amsterdam, June 1, 2001. The other lectures were given by
Margaret Boden,
David Chalmers,
Petra Stoerig, Axel Cleeremans,
Wim van de Grind and Ellert Nijenhuis. Special thanks go
to David Chalmers and the VSPA conference organization.
Seeing with sound for the blind: is it vision? (Peter B.L. Meijer)It is technically possible to convert video into audio while preserving a significant amount of visual information in the resulting (highly complex) sounds. If blind people could learn to mentally reconstruct the visual content carried by these sounds, then they might be able to "see" with sound. Last year the first totally blind volunteer has started to explore the limits through immersive usage: she wears a small head-mounted camera and a computer with software that converts the camera views on-the-fly into "soundscapes". Her personal opinion after almost a year of use: ``Wearing the Seeing With Sound program is like stepping from total darkness into light.'' This lecture will discuss some preliminary findings as well as discuss links with neuroscience, philosophy and psychology. It is meant as an open invitation to other disciplines to try and answer the question: is it vision?
More information is available at http://www.seeingwithsound.com
vspa2001.pdf (300 K).
Some of the one and two second WAV sound samples as demonstrated during the lecture can be heard by clicking the corresponding images below.
See also the web page on sound-induced mental imagery for the blind, and the web pages on the invited presentations at SIGGRAPH 98, NIC2001 and Tucson 2002.