28-year-old Neil Harbisson has achromatopsia, which means he only sees in black and white. You’ll notice in his photo however, that he’s wearing a camera mounted to his head. This converts colors into soundwaves—making him “hear” colors.
It’s almost like a form of synesthesia, where one of the forms makes people see colors for specific letters or numbers. Harbisson became a “cyborg” after meeting a fellow student while at university in England, who worked on it with a Slovenian software developer, fine-tuning it to the point where he can now see 360 color hues, as well as color saturation.
Considering he’s an artist, studying fine arts at school, being able to see color has helped him immensely—with the painting below being his interpretation of Bach’s Toccata and Fugue in D minor, taking the soundwaves he hears from the music, and converting it into color. [Wikimedia via Kuriositas]
