Essaie d'anglais

Today we are going to talk about the artist Neil Harrbisson who is a really special artist because since the day of his birth he is suffering of a total daltonism. In 2003 he started a project with the computer scientist Adam Montandon and the collaboration of Peter Kese and Matias Lizana and 1 years later at the age of 21 he “received” an operation in order to get the “eyeball” which is a colours sensors that detects the colours frequency in front of him and sends this frequency to a chip installed at the back of his head through bone conduction.

He’s been hearing colours since 2004, so now for him it’s perfectly normal to hear them all the time;  he is even able to dream in colours. Plus this “eyeball” allows him to “see” some things that the human eye can’t like the ultraviolet and infra-red light, but at the beginning he had to memorize the names of each colours so he had to “memorize” the notes.

Neil Harbisson had some problems with the uk government because he was not allowed to renew his  passport. The UK Passport Office would not allow him to appear with electronic equipment on his head. The artist wrote back insisting that the antenna should be considered part of his body as he had become a cyborg.  Letters from his doctor, friends and his college were sent to the passport office to give him support. After weeks of correspondence Harbisson's antenna was included. Harbisson states that he became a cyborg when the union between his organism and his antenna created a new sense.

So in 2014 he created Cyborg Foundation which is a foundation which helps people to become cyborg by the extension of their senses with the new technology that can be used as a part of our body.

Knowledges => senses => extension of senses= extension of knowledges.

Louis

The colour and the use of the technology as an extension of the artist (and not as a part of the artistic performance) are central in the work of Harbisson.

Audio: Harbisson has created a series of audio files with the colours of celebrity faces. Each face creates a unique micro tone chord depending on its colours. To create the sound portrait, Harbisson stands in front of the person and points his antenna at different parts of the face. Then he writes down the different notes he hears and later creates a sound file. Since 2004, he has created many live portraits of, for instance, Prince Charles, Woody Allen, and Leonardo DiCaprio.

Paintings: Hearing colour also means that everyday sounds, such as voices or music, become associated with colours too. Colour Scores is a series of paintings where Harbisson depicts what he hears, from music to speeches. In 2007, Harbisson crossed Europe to find out the main colours of important cities, visiting more than 50 countries. He scanned each capital until he was able to represent each city with two dominant hues. For example, in Monaco, it was azure and salmon pink; in Bratislava it was yellow and turquoise; and in Andorra it was dark green and fuchsia, and so on.

Eventually, Harbisson has also collaborated with a Spanish choregraph named Moon Ribas in a series of plays and dance shows, that associate the use of cybernetic, colour and movement on stage, and that evoke the relation between men and colours.

...