Have you ever heard of hearing color? Well, Neil Harbisson has a device that does just that.
Niel Harbisson spoke at TED in July of last year. He was born with a rare condition called achromatopsia, which means he is totally color blind. He has always seen the sky, the grass, and everything else in gray . . . even his dreams. He has a device that is connected to a chip in his head called an "eyeborg", that when pointed at color, it plays a certain tone.
In 2003, at the age of 21, Niel started a project with a computer scientist named Adam Montandon. and the result, with further collaborations with Peter Kese from Slovenia and Matias Lizana from Barcelona, is this electronic eye. The "eyeborg" takes the frequencies of the color in front of it and sends that frequency to a chip connected to the device in the back of his head.
For eight years now he has been hearing colors, and has grown adapt to it. He said, "It was my brain creating the sounds, not the software. so that's when I started to feel like a cyborg. It's when I started to feel that the cybernetic device was no longer a device. It had become a part of my body, an extension of my senses, and after some time, it even became a part of my official image."
He said that he used to dress in what looked good, but now he dresses in what sounds good. He said his outfit that day was C major because that was a happy tone.
"We should all think that knowledge comes from our senses, so if we extend our senses, we will consequently extend our knowledge. I think life will be much more exciting when we stop creating applications for mobile phones and we start creating applications for our own body. I think this will be a big, big change that we will see during this century."
-- Niel Harbisson
Author's Note: All information from this article came from the video on:
http://www.ted.com/talks/neil_harbisson_i_listen_to_color.html
