Can You Hear Colours?

A .......... Imagine being totally colour-blind, living in a world of greys, being unable to see the difference between red and green traffic lights or yellow and pale green. Do you think you could survive such a life in the city? That’s what life is like for Neil Harbisson. He was born with an irreversible condition called achromatopsia, or total colour blindness. That would make life difficult for anyone, but Neil is an artist - and the incredible thing is, he paints in colour.
B .......... When Neil was an art student, he only painted in black, white and grey because that is all he saw. He was very dissatisfied with his paintings. But one day, a young scientist called Adam Montandon visited the college to give a lecture. The two met and when Neil explained his problem, Adam decided to try to find a way to allow Neil to ‘see’ colours using sound.
C .......... Adam made a special device that let Neil ‘hear’ six colours. This is how it worked: light travels in waves, and different colours of light have different wavelengths. Red light has a long wavelength and violet light has a short wavelength. Adam used this knowledge to create a camera that measures the wavelength of the light that enters it and then makes a sound that corresponds to the colour of the light. So, if the camera sees red, it makes a low sound, and if it sees violet, it makes a high sound.
D .......... Adam has now developed a much more sophisticated device, called the Eyeborg, that allows Neil to see 360 different colours. Neil wears a camera on his head, which is attached to a laptop computer in a backpack. The computer analyses the colour and sends a sound to Neil’s wireless headset.
E .......... The Eyeborg has made a huge difference to Neil’s art. He is now using a wide range of colours. If he wants to paint something, he points his camera at it and memorises the sound. Neil now knows all the 360 sounds.
F .......... “I’ve got used to all the sounds,” he says. “It’s noisy, but probably not much noisier than a busy city street.” However, Neil faces some unusual problems. People sometimes think that he is filming them and they don’t like that. Security guards occasionally ask him to leave shops! But Neil is now inseparable from his Eyeborg and wears it all the time.