Let us introduce what we call Transparent Hearing: the use of microphone equipped headphones for augmented audio. It provides a framework for experiments like real-time audio alteration, multi-modal sensory integration and collaborative listening experiences. We attach high-quality microphones to headphones and send the signal through a computer to these headphones. We have built headphones that stop the music if somebody wants to talk to you, a pseudophone, and collaborative I Hear What You Hear headphones that are triggered by eye-contact.

Matt with the Transparent Headphones

The Headphones With a Sense play music, but if somebody comes close to you to talk to you, they pause your MP3 player on your computer and patch the person's speech through. If she/he leaves, the music resumes. The system detects if another person approaches you using reflective infrared distance sensors. You also can select the option for the music to fade out to a comfortable level for conversation and then fade back in when the conversation is over.

We also have built a Pseudophone, which allows you to hear in your right ear what you would normally hear in your left ear and vice versa.

We built a second set of our system and wired them up in such a way that person A's microphones were connected to person's B headphones and vice versa. This allowed you to put yourself "into somebody else's head". If the effect of the pseudophone was already impressive, this was astonishing This is an extreme interface for interpersonal communication: you can be constantly connected to somebody else's audio environment. It could either be an intimate relationship or a surveillance scenario where one could do other tasks without interrupting the monitoring.

Detailed information is available in this paper (pdf, 0.5 MB), presented at CHI.
The Powerpoint presentation is also available (requires Microsoft Powerpoint XP/2002, 12 MB zip file).

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