Rise of the cyborgs: 'I can feel events in Japan when I'm in New York'
Rise of the cyborgs: 'I can feel events in Japan when I'm
in New York'
As a cyborg you can have colors beamed to your brain and
wear earrings that sense what’s behind you – and more and more people are
getting involved
By Jordan Riefe Sunday 3 July 2016 06.00 EDT
What’s a cyborg to do when customs officials ask him to
remove his antenna for a passport photo? Or when the same antenna is damaged by
a Barcelona cop who mistakes it for a video camera? If you’re Neil Harbisson
you fight back, which is why he formed the Cyborg Foundation in 2010 along with
collaborator and fellow cyborg, Moon Ribas.
“It’s basically to promote cyborg art and cyborgism as a
social art movement, to help people become cyborgs and to identify cyborg
rights – so the right to have surgery and the right to be identified as being
technology,” he explains from their home in New York.
According to the foundation a wave of new cyborgs will be
breaking at the end of the summer – and now you can be one, too. The
foundation’s sister organization, Cyborg Nest, is currently taking orders for
North Sense, an implant that detects magnetic north, which will become
available in September for roughly $300. If this sounds nutty to you, perhaps
it’s your age. According to Harbisson, young people are flocking to the idea of
enhancing or adding to their senses through technology.
Born colorblind, Harbisson had his antenna surgically
attached so that he might detect color. Not actually see it, but feel and hear
notes and vibrations based on tone and saturation. Today, walking through a
grocery store sounds like a percussive symphony and, if he chooses to, he can
eat his favorite melody for lunch based on the colors of the ingredients.
“We focus on perception and sense, exceeding the mind by
adding technology, extending hearing beyond human hearing,” he explains. “Ultra
sounds and infra-sounds are two senses we could easily extend.” He also
includes something he calls retroception, or sensing what’s behind you, tested
by Ribas in 2010 when she wore a prototypical pair of earrings.
In more recent years she has been fitted with a chip
implant in her elbow that wirelessly attaches to seismographs around the world,
vibrating with varied intensity based on Richter scale readings. From such
movements she choreographs dance concerts she calls Waiting for Earthquakes.
Performed all over the world, the piece begins with her standing motionlessly
until a temblor occurs somewhere near or far, which, thankfully (or not),
happens every few minutes. But lest there should be an unexpected seismic lull,
she is working on a way to receive quake readings from the moon to fill the
gaps.
“Our senses don’t need to be attached to our body
anymore. We can sense things that are happening very far from our body. Right
now I can feel things that are happening in Japan even though I’m in New York.
So why not go outside the planet and feel movement that is happening in space?”
she asks.
Harbisson already receives signals from the International
Space Station through his antenna, and can take phone calls from five of his
friends around the globe. If there’s a beautiful sunset in Australia, his
friend in Melbourne might stream live images to his head so he can hear and
sense a sunset. “If someone sends violet colors at 3am and I’m asleep, I wake
up in the morning and I realize I dreamt about violet people, violet houses,”
he explains. “Sensing ultraviolet and infrared is now where I’m at and also
having internet connection so I can receive colors from external devices from
other parts of the world and satellites.”
According to Harbisson, cyborg art is two-fold. The first
step includes conceiving of and implanting a chip that extends the senses or
creates an altogether new sense. The second step involves creating art with the
new sense and sharing it with an audience. As part of his electronic music
compositions, Harbisson draws sound portraits, recording notes for the various
colors and tones in a face. His subjects include Leonardo DiCaprio (“a major
chord”), Woody Allen (“unsaturated”) and Macauley Culkin (“C-major”).
“As a person it’s changed the way I see life. When you
add a new sense, any space that you were in forever changes,” offers Harbisson,
who while physically altered claims a spiritual transformation as well. “It’s a
new sway of exploring reality I can enjoy. I can also explore space without
going there. So both Moon and I feel it’s interesting and exciting to send our
senses to space and become sense-tronauts or mind-stronauts where you can
explore without physically going there. It’s changed the way I see life, the
planet, space. Everything is much closer than it was before.”
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