The man who hears colour

Very interesting article on the BBC website today about Neil Harbisson, a colour-blind artist who, with the help of a friend, created a device that allows him to hear colours.

Until I was 11, I didn’t know I could only see in shades of grey. I thought I could see colours but that I was confusing them.

When I was 16, I decided to study art. I told my tutor I could only see in black and white, and his first reaction was, “What the hell are you doing here then?” I told him I really wanted to understand what colour was.

While attending a university cybernetics lecture he met fellow student Adam Montandon, Harbisson asked him if there was anything that could be made to help him see colours – Montandon

He came up with a simple device, made up of a webcam, a computer and a pair of headphones and created software that would translate any colour in front of me into a sound.

You can read the full article here.