For a long time Neil Harbisson, an artist and designer, lived a life in black and white to be born without being able to see the colors.
Today Neil has transhuman powers, in the form of an antenna implanted in his skull that allows him to “see” (or better say “hear”) colors with sound vibrations.
His partner Moon Ribas, on the other hand, has a seismic sensor implanted in her foot that allows her to "feel" the shaking of the earth during an earthquake.
Neil and Moon are actually two transhumans, two cyborgs, two members of a new “middle species” that represents a deeper connection between humans and technology. One of the aspects of transhumanism.
He feels the colors
During a conference a few months ago, the 2019 Indaba Design, Neil Harbisson he caught attention with a funny piece about his nature as a cyborg.
“It is impossible to ignore the existence of color especially when you can't see it. The reason I chose to feel colors is that colors are social elements: but I don't want to change the black and white nature of my life."Says Harbisson.
I think seeing in grayscale has many advantages: first of all a better night vision and a better distance vision.
Neil Harbisson
Neil created an early sensor prototype based on Sir Isaac Newton's intuition about sound and color, both frequencies. For this he introduced into the sensor a list of all the colors in the spectrum, including infrared.
After this first attempt, Neil created an antenna that was surgically implanted in his skull.
“My goal was to create an antenna that would pick up the dominant color in the scene before my eyes, communicating the sound of that color to my ears.”
She feels the earthquakes
moon ribas, his partner, did not need to speak much about his present nature. It produced a much more immediate performance. She showed the public exactly how her sensors implanted in her foot allow her to sense the movements at the base of an earthquake.
The movements in his performance coincided exactly with the shifts he felt. Ribas revealed that the next step is to "dance" on the data arriving live from the Moon and no longer on a series of pre-recorded data.
