The colours of sound

The profile of Neil Harbisson with the antenna connecting the world of colours to his brain through a skull implant. Image credit: TED

I hope you took the time to watch the clip in yesterday’s post. I have to say I watched it several times because of its power to make me think.

As I explained yesterday he co-designed the skull implant to have the possibility of seeing the colours of the world and his brain over the years has learnt to seamlessly capture the sounds into which the implant translated the colours into a sort of colour vision.
I cannot of course bet that such a translation would match our perception of purple is actually the same perception that purple generate in my brain. At the same time I cannot bet that my perception of purple is the same perception you have of purple. We have in common, through education, that when seeing a certain object we both say: “it is purple”.

Since each colour is translated into a “musical note” several colours create a chord: turquoise, purple and orange are a b-minor for Neil.

This has become an integral part of the way Neil sees the world and has give rise to a new -extended- phenotype. The implant has not just allowed Neil’s brain to perceive colours, the choice he made to have colours translated into sounds has led his brain to convert sounds into colours!

Hence when Neil listen to music he actually perceives it in terms of colours. In the photo of Neil shown above, the background is actually how he perceive a Mozart sonata. Hearing that Mozart sonata or looking at that image create the same perception in his brain (of course this happens when he “scan” the background image at a certain “speed” since in music the time component is essential: by scanning it more rapidly he would accelerate the “tempo”, conversely if he were to scan it more slowly).

I found these considerations, that he makes in the TED presentation, very thought provoking. Go back to the clip and listen to it once more.

You will appreciate the meaning of what he claim: I have become a cyborg.

We see a real symbiotic integration that is leading to an extended phenotype, i.e. it is increasing Neil’s behavioural characteristics when he is interacting with the environment.

This is amazing: humans have extended their phenotype through Society and Culture. Now they can extend their phenotype through a symbioses with a machine, in this case an artefact communicating with Neil, a computer.

Clearly, by manipulating the genome, through bio-engineering, we are changing the genotype, hence inducing a change in the phenotype, but we see that also by creating a symbioses with machines we are extending our phenotype. Transhumanism is already here although by affecting us without affecting the genotype is not creating a new species, we can still mate and generate offsprings with humans 1.0.

About Roberto Saracco

Roberto Saracco fell in love with technology and its implications long time ago. His background is in math and computer science. Until April 2017 he led the EIT Digital Italian Node and then was head of the Industrial Doctoral School of EIT Digital up to September 2018. Previously, up to December 2011 he was the Director of the Telecom Italia Future Centre in Venice, looking at the interplay of technology evolution, economics and society. At the turn of the century he led a World Bank-Infodev project to stimulate entrepreneurship in Latin America. He is a senior member of IEEE where he leads the New Initiative Committee and co-chairs the Digital Reality Initiative. He is a member of the IEEE in 2050 Ad Hoc Committee. He teaches a Master course on Technology Forecasting and Market impact at the University of Trento. He has published over 100 papers in journals and magazines and 14 books.