"I can have phone calls to my head," says Neil Harbisson, sitting across the table from me. Dangling over his forehead is an antenna that curves up and over from the back of his skull. The device, which he calls an "eyeborg", was recently upgraded, meaning his skull is now Bluetooth-enabled. "I can either connect to devices that are near me," he says, "or I can connect to the internet. So I can actually connect to anywhere in the world."
Next to Harbisson in this London cafe is his long-term artistic collaborator, Catalan choreographer Moon Ribas, who has a sensor implanted in her left arm that vibrates whenever an earthquake occurs. "I feel very connected to the Earth," says Ribas, who incorporates these vibrations into her performances.
Her implant is scarcely noticeable, but Harbisson's antenna, hovering above his Henry V-meets-the-Monkees hairdo, is quite the lifestyle statement. I tell him he looks like a cross between an insect and a call-centre worker. "I know what you mean about insects," he laughs. "I do feel more connected to other animals."
He believes we humans have a duty to use technology to transcend our senses. "Becoming a cyborg isn't just a life decision," he explains. "It's an artistic statement – I'm treating my own body and brain as a sculpture."
Harbisson's visualisation of Beethoven's Für Elise PR Harbisson is not the first person to claim artistic status by doing that. Frenchwoman Orlan, for instance, had plastic surgery nine times, altering her mouth, brow and chin to imitate icons of female beauty in western art. But Harbisson isn't just altering his body: he's altering his means of perception. His antenna is connected to a chip that translates colour into sound. "It detects the light's hue and converts it into a frequency I can hear as a note." The sensor was originally devised to help him counter a rare form of colour blindness called achromatopsia, which affects one in 33,000 people and means he sees the world in greys.
Although the artist, who was born in Belfast but raised in Catalonia, still sees things in greyscale, he hears them in vivid colour, transforming his experience of the world – and of art. "I like listening to Warhol and Rothko because their paintings produce clear notes. I can't listen to Da Vinci or Velázquez because they use closely related tones – they sound like the soundtrack for a horror film." He also links what he hears through his ears to colours: a telephone ring sounds green, while Amy Winehouse is red and pink.
Next to Harbisson in this London cafe is his long-term artistic collaborator, Catalan choreographer Moon Ribas, who has a sensor implanted in her left arm that vibrates whenever an earthquake occurs. "I feel very connected to the Earth," says Ribas, who incorporates these vibrations into her performances.
Her implant is scarcely noticeable, but Harbisson's antenna, hovering above his Henry V-meets-the-Monkees hairdo, is quite the lifestyle statement. I tell him he looks like a cross between an insect and a call-centre worker. "I know what you mean about insects," he laughs. "I do feel more connected to other animals."
He believes we humans have a duty to use technology to transcend our senses. "Becoming a cyborg isn't just a life decision," he explains. "It's an artistic statement – I'm treating my own body and brain as a sculpture."
Harbisson's visualisation of Beethoven's Für Elise PR Harbisson is not the first person to claim artistic status by doing that. Frenchwoman Orlan, for instance, had plastic surgery nine times, altering her mouth, brow and chin to imitate icons of female beauty in western art. But Harbisson isn't just altering his body: he's altering his means of perception. His antenna is connected to a chip that translates colour into sound. "It detects the light's hue and converts it into a frequency I can hear as a note." The sensor was originally devised to help him counter a rare form of colour blindness called achromatopsia, which affects one in 33,000 people and means he sees the world in greys.
Although the artist, who was born in Belfast but raised in Catalonia, still sees things in greyscale, he hears them in vivid colour, transforming his experience of the world – and of art. "I like listening to Warhol and Rothko because their paintings produce clear notes. I can't listen to Da Vinci or Velázquez because they use closely related tones – they sound like the soundtrack for a horror film." He also links what he hears through his ears to colours: a telephone ring sounds green, while Amy Winehouse is red and pink.
