Overcoming Personal Challenges

Just for a second, imagine being colour-blind, in a world of greyscale, being unable to differ red from blue, or yellow from pale green. This is the life of Neil Harbisson, who was born with achromatopsia; total colour blindness. This disorder would be sure to have an impact on anyone’s life, but Neil is an artist – and the incredible fact is that he paints in colour.

When Neil was at art school, he used only black, white and grey in his paintings because that was all he saw. He was very unhappy with his paintings. But one day, Neil met Adam Montandon, a young scientist. Neil explained his problem and Adam decided to try to find a way to allow Neil to ‘see’ colours using sound.

Neil initially thought that the project would not work, but Adam made a special device that let him ‘hear’ six colours. This is how it worked: light travels in waves, and thus different colours of light have different wavelengths. Red light has a long wavelength, while violet light wavelengths are short. Adam used this fact 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. Therefore, if the camera sees red, it makes a low sound, and if it sees violet, it makes a high sound.

Neil now uses a more sophisticated device, developed by Adam, which allows him to see 360 different colours. This device is called the ‘Eyeborg’. Neil wears a camera on his head, which is attached to a laptop in his backpack. The computer analyses the colour and sends a sound to Neil’s wireless headset.

Thanks to the eyeborg, Neil now uses a wide range of colours. If he paints, he points his camera at his subject and memorises the sound. He has had to memorise a lot of sounds, but he played the piano when he was a child, and this has helped him a great deal.

Neil is very satisfied with his art. However, it has created some unusual problems – for instance, some people are convinced he’s filming them. Security guards occasionally ask him to leave the stores! But Neil is now inseparable from his Eyeborg and wears it everywhere.