An eyeborg or eye-borg is a

body modification Body modification (or body alteration) is the deliberate altering of the human anatomy or human physical appearance. In its broadest definition it includes skin tattooing, socially acceptable decoration (''e.g.'', common earring, ear piercing in ...

apparatus which fits on the wearer's head, and is designed to allow people to perceive color through sound waves. It works with a head-mounted antenna that senses the colors directly in front of a person, and converts them in real-time into sound waves through bone conduction.

History

The first eyeborg was created in England in 2003 by Adam Montandon in collaboration with colourblind artist

Neil Harbisson Neil Harbisson (born 1982) is a Catalan-raised British-Irish-American cyborg artist and activist for transpecies rights. He is best known for being the first person in the world with an antenna implanted in his skull. Since 2004, internation ...

. The invention, under the heading ''Bridging the Island of the Colourblind Project'', won a British award in Innovation (Submerge 2004) and a European award in Content Tools and Interface Design ( Europrix 2004). In 2007, Peter Kese, a software developer from

Kranj Kranj (, ) is the List of cities and towns in Slovenia, fourth-largest city in Slovenia and the largest urban center of the traditional region of Upper Carniola (northwestern Slovenia) and the Slovene Alps. It is located approximately northwest o ...

Slovenia Slovenia, officially the Republic of Slovenia, is a country in Central Europe. It borders Italy to the west, Austria to the north, Hungary to the northeast, Croatia to the south and southeast, and a short (46.6 km) coastline within the Adriati ...

, made further developments to the eyeborg by increasing the number of color

hue In color theory, hue is one of the properties (called color appearance parameters) of a color, defined in the CIECAM02 model as "the degree to which a stimulus can be described as similar to or different from stimuli that are described as ...

s to 360 and adding

color saturation Colorfulness, chroma and saturation are attributes of perceived color relating to chromatic intensity. As defined formally by the International Commission on Illumination (CIE) they respectively describe three different aspects of chromatic ...

through different volume levels. In 2009, Matias Lizana, a student from Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya developed the eyeborg into a chip as part of his final year project.Sanchis, Ima
"La veo en blanco y negro pero la oigo en colores"
La Contra de ''

La Vanguardia ' (; , ) is a Spanish daily newspaper founded in 1881. It is printed in Spanish and, since 3 May 2011, also in Catalan. It has its headquarters in Barcelona and is Catalonia's leading newspaper. Despite being mostly distributed in Catalonia, ...

'', 10 July 2010. The chip allows users to have the device implanted and to hear colors beyond the limits of human perception such as infrared and ultraviolet.

Color to sound scales

Harbisson's Sonochromatic Music Scale (2003) is a microtonal and

logarithmic scale A logarithmic scale (or log scale) is a method used to display numerical data that spans a broad range of values, especially when there are significant differences among the magnitudes of the numbers involved. Unlike a linear Scale (measurement) ...

with 360 notes in an octave. Each note corresponds to a specific degree of the

color wheel A color wheel or color circle is an abstract illustrative organization of color hues around a circle, which shows the relationships between primary colors, secondary colors, tertiary colors etc. Some sources use the terms ''color wheel'' an ...

. The scale was introduced to the first eyeborg in 2004. Harbisson's Pure Sonochromatic Scale (2005) is a non-logarithmic scale based on the transposition of light frequencies to sound frequencies. The scale discards color as being part of a color wheel and ignores musical/logarithmic perception so it can overstep the limits of human perception. The introduction of the new scale to the eyeborg in 2010, allows users to decide whether they want to perceive colors logarithmically or not.

The blind

Since 2005, eyeborgs have been donated to blind communities in Europe, Asia and America with the aim of helping the blind develop the sense of color. The first blind person to try out an eyeborg was

Sabriye Tenberken Sabriye Tenberken (born 1970) is a German tibetologist and co-founder of the organisation Braille Without Borders. Biography Sabriye was born in Cologne, West Germany. She lost her sight slowly as a child due to retinitis pigmentosa, and he ...

followed by blind students from

Braille Without Borders Braille Without Borders (BWB) is an international organisation for the blind in developing countries. It was founded in Lhasa, Tibet, by Sabriye Tenberken and Paul Kronenberg in 1998. Overview BWB's mission is to give hope and practical ski ...

in Tibet and members of the Sociedad de Ciegos de Pichincha in Ecuador. In 2011, vice-president of Ecuador

Lenin Moreno Vladimir Ilyich Ulyanov ( 187021 January 1924), better known as Vladimir Lenin, was a Russian revolutionary, politician and political theorist. He was the first head of government of Soviet Russia from 1917 until his death in 1924, and of ...

announced that his government would collaborate with the

Cyborg Foundation The Cyborg Foundation is a nonprofit organization created in 2010 by cyborg activists and artists Moon Ribas and Neil Harbisson. The foundation is a platform for the research, creation and promotion of projects related to extending and creating ne ...

to create eyeborgs and new sensory extensions. In 2012, after lecturing at Escola Politécnica de Pernambuco in Recife, the

signed a partnership to create eyeborgs and other new human extensions in collaboration with

Universidade de Pernambuco The University of Pernambuco (, UPE; formerly ', FESP) is a public state university located in Recife, Pernambuco, Brazil Brazil, officially the Federative Republic of Brazil, is the largest country in South America. It is the world's List ...

in Brazil. Eyeborgs are currently being treated as body parts rather than as devices, and therefore are donated rather than sold.Maia, Rafae
"Nao quero vender olhos"

Terra Networks Terra was a Spanish Internet multinational company owned by Telefónica. It was headquartered in Spain and had offices in Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Mexico, the United States and Peru. Part of the Telefónica Group (the former Spanish public tele ...

, 9 February 2012.

References

External links

Video: How the eyeborg works
{{Webarchive, url=https://web.archive.org/web/20120812034717/http://www.ted.com/talks/neil_harbisson_i_listen_to_color.html , date=2012-08-12
Eyeborg Website (Eyeborg chip development site)Article about an eyeborg user on Wired (USA 2008)Eyeborg user example on The Sunday Times (UK, 2008)Information from BBC (UK, 2005)Neil Harbisson's personal website
Cybernetics Visual disturbances and blindness Color vision

History

Color to sound scales

The blind

See also

References

External links