The Future is Here

It may be the product that design forgot – but now its day has come! Neil Thomas reports on the potential future for hearing products as objects of desire and the new display we are opening at the Victoria and Albert (V&A) museum in London.

The project actually began in early 2004 and, after many months of work from a wide range of specialists, the display opened at the V and A Museum on 26 July, and will remain open until 5 March 2006. This issue, we highlight a small selection of the projects on display, discuss the reasoning behind the project, and what it is aiming to achieve.

Going deaf in Ibiza

Paul Kaye is brilliant in his latest role in the British movie It's All Gone Pete Tong. He plays a successful DJ in Ibiza who suddenly loses all his hearing, due to years of extremely loud music.

His character Frankie Wilde sees his life fall apart. He can no longer hear music or follow conversations. His trophy wife leaves him, his record label drops him and he locks himself away with a mountain of cocaine. Frankie's immediate response to his hearing loss isn't the sort of strategy you'll find recommended in any RNID leaflet, and eventually, he sees the light and decides to sort himself out. He stops taking drugs, gets himself a beautiful lipreading teacher and works out a way to DJ again (by 'feeling' and 'seeing' music).

Music on the Move

Portable music has recently undergone quite a revolution. Gone are clunky old cassette tapes and even CDs are becoming less common. In their place has risen a bright, new star – MP3 players.  These are small, very portable, hold an amazing amount of music and have quickly become affordable. You need a modern computer to transfer music onto your MP3 player once you've 'ripped' (copied) it from a CD or downloaded it from a website. You can also use the software supplied with the MP3 player to produce compilations or to alter the sound quality of your recordings.

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