Colour-blind artist learns to paint by hearing

Neil Harbisson is officially the first Cyborg in Britain. The Dartington College student is completely colour-blind. Adam Montandon, a cybernetics expert, who came to give a lecture at Neil’s college created the system and is the cofounder of HMC Interactive.

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.

“I used to paint rather literally,” he said. “I would stand in front of something and just paint what I saw immediately before me. Now I’m doing more abstracts and being much more free and liberal with my art.” The device has made a huge difference to Harbisson’s art, which is now his profession.

via [times online]