Listening to the sound of colours

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Neil Harbisson

As a child, when Neil Harbisson started school, he realised he was the only one among his classmates who didn’t have a favourite colour. His parents took him to a doctor, who diagnosed him with colour blindness.

Today, the 30-year-old contemporary artist can experience even those colours that are out of the range of human sight. He does this with the help of a cybernetic eye attached to his head (called “eyeborg”) that converts colours into audible frequencies, as he explained on a recent visit to the country. In 2004, when Neil began wearing the eyeborg — a head-mounted camera that picked up the colours before him and converted them into sound waves in real time. Neil memorised the sounds pertaining to different colours: Higher frequency colours produced high-pitched sounds, lower frequency colours, a bolder sound. Modifications to the eyeborg soon allowed Neil to perceive about 360 colours. His improved senses came at a cost — Neil had to lug a computer weighing five kg in a backpack at all times. Then in 2010, the computer was replaced with a chip. “I lost five kg, without even going on a diet!” he quips.
He’s used his enhanced sensory abilities to enhance his art — he paints portraits of people based on how they sound (“human skin ranges from light to dark shades of orange,” says Neil, “there is no black and white”), can “hear a Picasso” and even composes symphonies based on colour. In 2010, Neil set up the Cyborg Foundation and is an impassioned activist to the cause of using technology to enhance our bodies.