The man who hears colour: Neil Harbisson.
Science fiction is full of stories in which the machines take over and humans are left subservient to their own creations, but according to some artists and experimenters, that need not be our future.
The work of Neil Harbisson, an Irish-born human cyborg, and Stelarc, an Australian performance artist, suggest that if we unite our bodies with technology, we can drastically extend our abilities and perception, and maybe even stay one step ahead of the robots.
Appearing at a Queensland University of Technology's robotics event, Robotronica, on Sunday, the pair told Mashable Australia why body hacking could offer us a different, evolved future.
The man who sees colour as sound
Neil Harbisson was born colour blind, yet seeing only in black and white and grey scale had its benefits. He could easily remember shapes without the distraction of colour — but he did not stop wondering what colour was like. Even if you don't see blue, green or yellow, you can't ignore their existence, he said. Everyday life is full of references to it, from Greenland to brown sugar.
In 2003, Harbisson began to collaborate with cybernetics expert Adam Montandon to see if he could use technology to see colour through sound. Ultimately, the pair settled on a permanent solution: Harbisson had an Internet-connected antenna inserted into his head that allows him to hear the light frequencies of colour — now he is able perceive colour through vibration.
Everything around him has a note. On Sunday, for example, he was wearing F Sharp coloured shoes. Each food item he eats has a note, and supermarkets are like going to a night club — the section with cleaning products has the best sounds, he said. Even humans can be perceived in this melodious way. Apparently, MaCaulay Culkin sounds like C Major.
Neil Harbisson describing how Australia's colours sound, as picked up by his antenna.#Robotronica #qut https://t.co/SsVHElqWZG
— Ariel Bogle (@arielbogle) August 23, 2015
Using the antenna, Harbisson can pass colour blindness tests and it has allowed him to surpass the limits of human colour perception, by adding the ability to pick up infrared and ultraviolet. In a bank, for example, he can often tell if the infrared alarms are on or off.
Oddly enough, adding a sensor to his body has not left Harbisson feeling like a machine. Rather, he said he now feels much more connected to other animal species, like insects who also have antennas. "We can use cybernetics to extend our perception ... Now that I've become a cyborg, I feel more connected to the world and to nature than machines," he said.
He is also not limiting himself to this Earth. Harbisson's antenna is connected to cameras on the International Space Station, and he is beginning to investigate the colours of space.
Having an Internet-enabled appendage doesn't come without risks: Harbisson has been hacked. Once, someone illicitly sent a message to his brain through the antenna, proving even cyborgs can get spam.
And yet, in his opinion, the possibilities the technology offers make it all worthwhile. Although Harbisson's new sense doesn't have a specific name, he believes he's developing the Internet as a sixth sense. "I know I see the Internet as a sensory extension, because it allows me to sense colours that are far away from me or from space," he said.
He also wants to help others share his new capacities. In 2010, Harbisson started the Cyborg Foundation, which aims to help humans become cyborgs if they wish to, defend cyborg rights and promote cyborgism in art and society. However, he predicted, in 100 years the focus will instead be genetic modification and sensors like his antenna will be created simply by altering our genes.
We shouldn't be afraid of getting intimate with technology, Harbisson believes. "If we merge with technology, technology won't become more intelligent than us," he said. "I don't see technology replacing our brains ... Technology becomes much stronger if we unite."
The man with an ear on his arm
Stelarc.
As a performance artist, Stelarc has always experimented with his own body. From building exoskeletons to designing a tiny camera sculpture that entered and filmed his stomach, the human form has always been a site for technological investigation.
His most recent project, adding a 3D third ear to his arm took more than 10 years to get underway. He had to find a surgeon willing to perform the surgery, and he hopes to soon add an Internet-enabled microphone to the ear that will one day let people from all over the world listen to him, wherever he is.
"This ear is not for me, I have two good ears. It's an Internet organ for people in other places," he said Sunday.
Stelarc suggests we should not accept the biological status quo. The biological body is not very robust, he pointed out, it malfunctions often and has a short longevity. With technology, we're suddenly not bound by skin or limited to the space that it occupies.
In some ways, we're already extended operational systems, he suggested. "You've got a mobile phone, you could punch a couple of numbers to me in London and all of a sudden there's an acoustical collapse of the space between two people," he said. "Or with the Internet of Things, your phone will know through GPS that you're just about to reach home, and so it will switch the heater and lights on."
If we open the body up to technology, we might not need all these smartphones, tablets and wearables fitness bands. "[In the future] there may be no visible technology around," he said. "We could have ingested it, inserted it into ourselves or maybe even modified our genetic code with nano machines."
This doesn't mean being one with machines has been easy for Stelarc. The microphone originally inserted into the ear on his arm got infected and had to be removed, and in another project, a mechanical third hand, despite it being designed to be a permanent attachment to his body, he ended up just using it for performances because of its weight and the skin irritation from the electrodes.
Like Harbisson, with all that artificial intelligence imbued in objects inside the human body, the possibility of being hacked cannot be overlooked. "Someone took over a Jeep," he said, referring to a report in July where two hackers were able to take over a moving car. "Well, someone might take over my body and do things I wouldn't be responsible for."
In Stelarc's opinion, the possibility of intruders getting hold of our bodies should not hold us back. We should acknowledge that our bodies are products of evolution, he suggested, and this may simply be the next step. Historically, technologically and socially, we are always in a sense becoming something that we were not yesterday, or 10 years ago, or 50 years ago. So, why not hack it?
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