Neil Harbisson, the artist who painted the works above, suffers from achromatopsia, complete color blindness. He now paints with the assistance of the Eyeborg system, a head-mounted camera that identifies 360 colors and translates them into sounds that Harbisson hears in an earpiece. From The Times Online:
The device has made a huge difference to Harbisson’s art, which is now his profession. Since wearing the Eyeborg he has expanded from just two or three, usually primary, colours to many more.
“I used to paint rather literally,” he said. “I would stand in front of something and just paint what I saw immediately before me. Now I’m doing more abstracts and being much more free and liberal with my art…”
Harbisson is fortunate in that he has both an art background (his Spanish mother is an amateur artist) and a musical one. He has played the piano since he was a youngster, and this has helped him to assimilate the sounds. “It’s like the chords and scales of a piano and the different sounds they make,” he said. “So it’s as if I’m composing on the piano.”
He also wears the Eyeborg in everyday life. “I’ve got used to all the sounds,” he said. “It’s noisy but probably not much more noisy than a very busy city street.”