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Neil Harbisson X Jemma Foster
Neil Harbisson is a contemporary artist and cyborg activist → @neilharbisson
JF: In 2004 you became the world’s first legally-recognsied cyborg. What prompted you to develop and implant the antenna that converts colour into sound in your brain?
NH: I was studying music at Dartington College of Arts and we were asked to use technology for a multimedia project. Being colour blind, I see in a grayscale and so was interested in the relationship between colour and sound. Together with Adam Montandon, I created a device that transposed colour with sounds. This was the first time I was able to experience walking in the street, hearing the colours around me. I then approached robotics students to develop a chip and designed the antenna so that colour is translated directly into the bone, which in turn allows me to ‘hear’ sound, although I am not using my ears. It took me a long time to find a surgeon willing to implant the antenna.
JF: What were your first impressions of this sensory upgrade?
NH: It was strange as suddenly one of my senses depended on external influences, rather than my body. It was my first understanding of being able to go beyond the limitations of the body. I felt an expansion of my sense of self.
JF: Since the implant, have you experienced any other cross-wiring of the senses, or synaesthesia, such as sound and taste?
NH: Not synaesthesia as such, as this is uniting existing senses and because the antenna communicates colour into my bones, it is an independent sense. All senses are connected, and we are all experiencing synaesthesia in a way, but it is more prevalent in childhood as we tend to divide the sense as we age. We create walls between self and other, and this way of categorisation creates an illusion of separation, whereas children are more flexible in their perception of their environment and experience.
JF: How do you work with colour in daily life?
NH: I dress depending on my mood, using the physics of light waves - more saturated colours are more intense and louder, whereas unsaturated ones are quieter. I surround myself with objects that create a certain soundscape. For a concert, I will pick colours or objects like socks or fruit – that give me enough variety to allow me to create chords and small melodies.
JF: Do you have a preferred colour or frequency?
NH: Infrared I love, as it is very low and profound.
JF: As with other species, such as plants, you can detect frequencies on the light spectrum, such as infrared and ultraviolet rays, that are unavailable to human physiology. In some ways, you are versed in a similar language that normally presents a barrier to interspecies communication. Do you feel more connection or empathy to the more-than-human?
NH: Yes. My senses extend beyond the human to crossover into those of other species, so I have an advanced sensory perception of my environment that puts me closer to other species than perhaps is usually possible. We - myself and animals or plants - can experience sensory life from a similar place. I feel more in tune with nature, but it is still coming from a human perspective.
JF: After a few years, you connected your antenna to the internet to experience a wider range of information and invite a more collaborative process, what were the results of this?
NH: I gave permission to five people to send colours day or night to colour my experience. This was particularly interesting at night when colours would enter and alter my dreams. I would get woken up by colours, or they would blend with my dream, for example if someone sent me yellow, I might dream of bananas and wake up with these images in my head.
JF: In the Space Concert series, you connected to NASA’s live stream of open-source imaging sensors on the International Space Station. How was that?
NH: This was a whole new experience, giving me a sense outside of the planet, there were high levels of ultraviolets, which was quite overwhelming. These are high frequencies very close to each other that vibrate a lot in the head, high pitched microtones that are a bit unusual and quite unpleasant. I could only do this for short periods of time and even the audience was affected, people reported feeling unwell and we even had a couple of incidents when people with epilepsy experienced seizures, so we had to stop.
JF: You also have geomagnetic sensors in your knees, allowing you to sense north. Many indigenous knowledge systems describe human sensory perception as having twelve or more senses, but that we have lost these more subtle abilities in the modern world. Do you believe that technology can be applied temporarily to reawaken these dormant senses, such as our inner compass?
NH: As a cyborg, having these implants has heightened and expanded my sensory perception. Intuition is a combination of all the senses, so with increased awareness of these, intuition increases with that. In general, modern culture places importance on knowledge and thinking that sensing and feeling. Most people walking in the street are in their heads, lost in thought, and not paying attention to what is around them, to what their environment feels like, smells like, sounds like. To have heightened senses, changes your perception of reality so that you discover things about nature that you wouldn’t otherwise notice.
JF: What are you currently you working on?
NH: Time Flies is a project that I am developing together with another cyborg artist, Pol Lombarte. It is an organ that will allow us to feel the passage of time and alter its course to demonstrate the perception of time as an illusion. We will have plates implanted into our backs, consisting of small motors that will vibrate across different areas under the skin to create the sensation of wings, fluttering. To begin with, the wings will vibrate at regular set intervals, to set the passage of time. A neurologist will be doing some tests before the implants, and after a few months we will be tested again to see if we have developed a precise perception of time. After we have adapted to this time scale, we will begin to play with time. I will be able to alter Pol’s implants and vice versa, so we will be able to distort each other’s perception of time and see how our experience varies.
JF: How do you see this influencing your perception of colour?
NH: Colour is light and light is time, so I am sure that something will happen – but to what extent it alters my experience of colour we will have to see.
JF: Do you have a vision for the future and other sensory adaptations?
NH: I would like to develop an organ for a sense of humour. There are drugs to make you laugh, laughing is to a certain extent a chemical process but how cybernetics can achieve this is something to experiment with. When I am older, I want to explore the sense of balance so that I can support that process as I age.
Image 1: Space Concert by Neil Harbisson, image Will Clapson
Image 2: Neil Harbisson by Moon Ribas
Neil Harbisson X Jemma Foster
Neil Harbisson is a contemporary artist and cyborg activist → @neilharbisson
JF: In 2004 you became the world’s first legally-recognsied cyborg. What prompted you to develop and implant the antenna that converts colour into sound in your brain?
NH: I was studying music at Dartington College of Arts and we were asked to use technology for a multimedia project. Being colour blind, I see in a grayscale and so was interested in the relationship between colour and sound. Together with Adam Montandon, I created a device that transposed colour with sounds. This was the first time I was able to experience walking in the street, hearing the colours around me. I then approached robotics students to develop a chip and designed the antenna so that colour is translated directly into the bone, which in turn allows me to ‘hear’ sound, although I am not using my ears. It took me a long time to find a surgeon willing to implant the antenna.
JF: What were your first impressions of this sensory upgrade?
NH: It was strange as suddenly one of my senses depended on external influences, rather than my body. It was my first understanding of being able to go beyond the limitations of the body. I felt an expansion of my sense of self.
JF: Since the implant, have you experienced any other cross-wiring of the senses, or synaesthesia, such as sound and taste?
NH: Not synaesthesia as such, as this is uniting existing senses and because the antenna communicates colour into my bones, it is an independent sense. All senses are connected, and we are all experiencing synaesthesia in a way, but it is more prevalent in childhood as we tend to divide the sense as we age. We create walls between self and other, and this way of categorisation creates an illusion of separation, whereas children are more flexible in their perception of their environment and experience.
JF: How do you work with colour in daily life?
NH: I dress depending on my mood, using the physics of light waves - more saturated colours are more intense and louder, whereas unsaturated ones are quieter. I surround myself with objects that create a certain soundscape. For a concert, I will pick colours or objects like socks or fruit – that give me enough variety to allow me to create chords and small melodies.
JF: Do you have a preferred colour or frequency?
NH: Infrared I love, as it is very low and profound.
JF: As with other species, such as plants, you can detect frequencies on the light spectrum, such as infrared and ultraviolet rays, that are unavailable to human physiology. In some ways, you are versed in a similar language that normally presents a barrier to interspecies communication. Do you feel more connection or empathy to the more-than-human?
NH: Yes. My senses extend beyond the human to crossover into those of other species, so I have an advanced sensory perception of my environment that puts me closer to other species than perhaps is usually possible. We - myself and animals or plants - can experience sensory life from a similar place. I feel more in tune with nature, but it is still coming from a human perspective.
JF: After a few years, you connected your antenna to the internet to experience a wider range of information and invite a more collaborative process, what were the results of this?
NH: I gave permission to five people to send colours day or night to colour my experience. This was particularly interesting at night when colours would enter and alter my dreams. I would get woken up by colours, or they would blend with my dream, for example if someone sent me yellow, I might dream of bananas and wake up with these images in my head.
JF: In the Space Concert series, you connected to NASA’s live stream of open-source imaging sensors on the International Space Station. How was that?
NH: This was a whole new experience, giving me a sense outside of the planet, there were high levels of ultraviolets, which was quite overwhelming. These are high frequencies very close to each other that vibrate a lot in the head, high pitched microtones that are a bit unusual and quite unpleasant. I could only do this for short periods of time and even the audience was affected, people reported feeling unwell and we even had a couple of incidents when people with epilepsy experienced seizures, so we had to stop.
JF: You also have geomagnetic sensors in your knees, allowing you to sense north. Many indigenous knowledge systems describe human sensory perception as having twelve or more senses, but that we have lost these more subtle abilities in the modern world. Do you believe that technology can be applied temporarily to reawaken these dormant senses, such as our inner compass?
NH: As a cyborg, having these implants has heightened and expanded my sensory perception. Intuition is a combination of all the senses, so with increased awareness of these, intuition increases with that. In general, modern culture places importance on knowledge and thinking that sensing and feeling. Most people walking in the street are in their heads, lost in thought, and not paying attention to what is around them, to what their environment feels like, smells like, sounds like. To have heightened senses, changes your perception of reality so that you discover things about nature that you wouldn’t otherwise notice.
JF: What are you currently you working on?
NH: Time Flies is a project that I am developing together with another cyborg artist, Pol Lombarte. It is an organ that will allow us to feel the passage of time and alter its course to demonstrate the perception of time as an illusion. We will have plates implanted into our backs, consisting of small motors that will vibrate across different areas under the skin to create the sensation of wings, fluttering. To begin with, the wings will vibrate at regular set intervals, to set the passage of time. A neurologist will be doing some tests before the implants, and after a few months we will be tested again to see if we have developed a precise perception of time. After we have adapted to this time scale, we will begin to play with time. I will be able to alter Pol’s implants and vice versa, so we will be able to distort each other’s perception of time and see how our experience varies.
JF: How do you see this influencing your perception of colour?
NH: Colour is light and light is time, so I am sure that something will happen – but to what extent it alters my experience of colour we will have to see.
JF: Do you have a vision for the future and other sensory adaptations?
NH: I would like to develop an organ for a sense of humour. There are drugs to make you laugh, laughing is to a certain extent a chemical process but how cybernetics can achieve this is something to experiment with. When I am older, I want to explore the sense of balance so that I can support that process as I age.
Image 1: Space Concert by Neil Harbisson, image Will Clapson
Image 2: Neil Harbisson by Moon Ribas