The Eyeborg is an electronic device that allows colours to be perceived as sounds. It was developed by Neil Harbisson and Adam Montandon in 2004.
It is a small sensor placed at eye level, held in place with a cable that transports colour information to a computer or chip. The electromagnetic light waves are turned into sound frequencies that are heard as musical notes.
In early versions of the Eyeborg, the camera sent the data to a laptop, and Neil heard the sound through headphones. In later versions, improvements were made that allowed him to "hear" colours from vibrations in a small tube around his head, doing away with the need for headphones. Currently, Neil is using this latest version.
To learn the different combinations of colour and sound, Neil memorised the frequencies associated with each colour: high frequency colours have high notes and low frequency colours have low notes.
In 2007 on a trip to Slovenia Neil met Peter Kese, who developed an enhancement for the Eyeborg to detect colour saturation: the higher the colour intensity, the louder the sound.
The next step for Neil will be a magnetic implant or a titanium screw between the skin and the cranium to hold in place the new chip that Matías Lizana created in 2010, which will mean greater comfort and portability for the Eyeborg and greater purity of sound vibration directly on the bone.