Eyes Opened to Sound of Socks
Neil Harbisson is, quite literally, a man who has always viewed life in black and white. The 22-year-old Spaniard, who moved to Totnes in south Devon in 2003, was born with achromatopsia, a rare condition that affects only one person in 33,000 and causes monochromatism, or complete colour blindness.
But last year, he was able to see – or, more accurately, hear – colours for the first time. Harbisson has been fitted with a machine that turns colours into soundwaves, with a different sound representing each hue. The Eye-Borg, as it is known, features a head-mounted digital camera that reads the colours in front of Harbisson and converts them, via a laptop he carries in a backpack, into sound. A scale of musical tones represents the spectrum of colours – light hues are high-pitched, while darker colours sound bolder. It is, in a way, forced synaesthesia; its creator, 23-year-old digital multimedia expert Adam Montandon, describes the invention as "like hearing a colour wheel".
Harbisson has worn the Eye-Borg for every waking moment since last March, when he became the first person to be fitted with one. It even features in his passport photograph. Previously, it was as difficult for him to comprehend being surrounded by colour as it is for us to understand what it would be like to live in a black and white world.
"I always felt I was missing out during conversations," he says. "People do not realise h
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