Eyeborg Lets Color-Blind Artist Paint in Color

Neatorama:

“Neil Harbisson is a color-blind artist who can now paint – in color
- thanks to a cybernetic device called the Eyeborg which converts 360
colors into different sounds:

As an art student at Dartington College of Arts in
Devon, he painted only in black and white because that is all he saw.
But three years ago he met Adam Montandon, a cybernetics expert who
came to give a lecture at the college.

After the talk, Montandon was told of Harbisson’s condition and
he took up the challenge of solving the problem, enabling Harbisson to
paint in colour. The artist suffers from achromatopsia – or complete
congenital colour blindness.

Montandon decided to harness the way in which different colours
reflect light at different frequencies, with light vibrating fastest
from violet and slowest from red.

The first device fitted to Harbisson’s head was fairly
primitive, letting him “hear” only six colours. His current model is
far more sophisticated, giving him access to 360 colours.

Montandon created the Eyeborg system, manufactured by HMC
Interactive, the design company in Plymouth that he co-founded. It is a
head-mounted digital camera that reads the colours directly in front of
it. The camera is connected to a laptop computer, carried in a
backpack, which slows down the frequency of light waves to the
frequency of sound waves. The computer then sends the “sound” of each
colour to an earpiece worn by Harbisson. Montandon expects the system
eventually to be as small as an MP3 player.”

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