Soundwave Tattoos Immortalize Your Favorite Tunes on Your Body

The future of ink just took a high-tech turn with new Soundwave Tattoos by Skin Motion that can be heard through an app on your phone. So, you can imprint your grandma’s voice, your cat’s purr, or your favorite song right into your skin.

Tattoo artist Nate Siggard came up with the idea after two of his friends got a tattoo of the opening line of “Tiny Dancer” and his wife said, “wouldn’t it be cool if you could listen to the tattoo?”

Siggard came up with a way to create a soundwave from an audio clip that could be read by a scanning app on your phone, much like you would scan a barcode at the grocery store. The app sees the shape and matches it to an audio clip on file and plays it back for you as many times as you want.

It is important that only a certified artist put the tattoo on your skin to make sure it can withstand the test of time. Skin Motion says they are working on registering 100 artists from over 15 countries who will be able to implement the designs, but stresses that it is the wearer’s responsibility to make sure that the healing process goes well to ensure it works.

There has been a lot of innovation surrounding the tattoo industry in recent years. Ephemeral Tattoos has designed finer pigment tattoos that dissolve and disappear over time so there will be “no ragrets.” Another team of researchers designed tattoos that can check your blood alcohol levels by testing your sweat and send an alert to your smartphone.

As for Soundwave Tattoos, the augmented reality app is still in production, but a limited supply will become available in June 2017. Skin Motion says there are over 9,000 applicants on the waiting list and thousands more expected to come, as the tats have gone viral in the past couple of weeks.