'Cyborg' artist who 'hears' colour turns to time travel

MATARO (Spain) • For Neil Harbisson, a self-described "cyborg" artist living near Barcelona, colour is quite literally music to his ears, thanks to an antenna he designed to overcome colour blindness.

Well-known in Spain and with an international following that has enabled him to meet the likes of actors Leonardo DiCaprio and Tom Cruise, Harbisson is now testing out a new device designed to physically feel the passing of time.

Where once the term cyborg conjured up images of Arnold Schwarzenegger's Terminator, technology today is expanding human capacities through prostheses and implants.

Born in Northern Ireland with achromatopsia, a rare condition meaning he can see only in greyscale, Harbisson moved to Barcelona as a child and grew up obsessed with colour and things he could not sense.

It was an obsession that saw the Briton, now 39, eventually go under the surgeon's knife to transform his identity and life.

While at music college in England, he developed the slim metal rod that arches over his head and vibrates according to colours it detects.

At first glance, it looks like wearable technology, but it is as much a part of his body as his nose or his ears, giving him the ability to "hear" the colour his eyes cannot see.

"Being a cyborg means technology is part of your identity," he said. "It allows me to sense colours from infrared to ultra-violet through vibrations in my head that then become sound, so I can actually hear colour."

In 2004, he managed to persuade a surgeon to drill it into his skull, the technology becoming part of his body as the bone grew around it.

The sensor picks up the frequency of colours and translates them into sounds that he perceives through bone conduction.

Humans normally hear using air conduction with sound waves passing through the outer and middle ears and causing the inner eardrum to vibrate.

But with bone conduction, the vibrations are transmitted through the skull or jawbone directly to the inner ear.

The colour-sound association also means he senses colours when listening to music or even speeches, with every syllable having a frequency that relates to colour.

In the home where Harbisson grew up and where his mother still lives, a riot of coloured canvases line the walls, the staircase lined with curious-looking "facial scores" of celebrities like DiCaprio and Cruise.

These Hollywood stars let Harbisson detect the "sound" of their skin tone and lip colour, which are rendered in enigmatic charcoal lines.

But Harbisson is now turning his attention to a new project.

He has created a device shaped like a chunky metal collar, designed to sense the passing of time, and is kicking off a year-long trial to see how it works.

"There's a point of heat that takes 24 hours to go around my neck and allows you to feel the rotation of the planet," he said.

"Once the brain gets used to it, you can use an app to make subtle changes to the speed of the point of heat, which should alter your perception of time," he added.

For now, it is a permanent wearable rather than an implant. A previous incarnation had to be scrapped because he was "getting burnt" by 6pm.

"This is an art that does carry some kind of risk, but it's an unknown risk because we don't have much history of bodies and technology being merged," he said.

AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE