
Crystal Wu Jing played Brahm's Hungry Dance No.5 with Swedish Royal Philharmonic Orchestra in Stockholm Concert Hall on May 23, 2016. [Photo: Chen Xufei/CRIENGLISH.com]
Blind Chinese Musician Crystal Wu Jing has for the first time performed with the Swedish Royal Philharmonic Orchestra with the help of a new technology called Tactsense, an innovative new technology from a group of Swedish programmers, designers and others.
CRI's Chen Xuefei has attended the concert and filed this report.
Crystal Wu Jing said she had a dream to play with a philharmonic Orchestra. And now she has realized the dream with the Swedish Royal Philharmonic Orchestra at the famous Stockholm Concert Hall.
"I feel it is very exciting, it is wonderful to be part of the Philharmonic Orchestra, because usually visually impaired people are outside an orchestra and it has always been like this, and many many years I have been studying the flute, and I have always hoped to be part of it, so I feel very excited it works now. I hope I can introduce this to other countries as well and it is good that Sweden starts first. "
With the new technology, Wu Jing says it's as if she can "see" and feel what the conductor does, but it is through the sensations in her foot.
Stockholm Concert Hall Production Head Charlotte Runevret says the new tech is wonderful.
"It's been fantastic, it was really great to hear Wu Jing play with the orchestra for the first time, her dream comes true, and it was lovely to see how happy she was after the concert, it was pure pleasure to see her happiness, wonderful, so hopefully Wu Jing will play with many orchestra in the world and many other blind musicians can play with orchestra as well with this technique."
Project Manager Ric Wasserman says the project took two years to develop.
"The reason we started this project was that Wu Jing has a dream. A signal can be sent through an infrarecamera and comes off on Wu Jing's skin under her foot in almost real time with the Symphony Orchestra and that has never happened before. "
Wasserman says the invention is not just for visually impaired musicians but can also be implemented for other movements.
"But it can be used in many other ways, it can be used anywhere or anytime for blind or visually impaired person who wants to take instruction can get that information in a sensation on the skin, in other words, if you want to learn Yoga, if you want to learn Taiji, If you like to learn dance, anything it has a set of movements, we can program that and have that work."
The project was in cooperation with Swedish National Sight Agency and involved in engineers, programmers and designers.
Wasserman says he hopes the technology can be developed into a marketable product so that millions of visually impaired people around the world can expect a revolution in their daily lives.
For CRI, this is Chen Xuefei reporting from Stockholm.
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