英国色盲艺术家大脑植入芯片“听”颜色

Did you know that colors can be seen as well as heard? Well, now you do, thanks to 31-year-old Neil Harbisson, a color blind artist who spent years looking for a way of experiencing the colors of the world around him.

你知道吗？颜色不仅可以被看见，还能被“听见”！31岁的尼尔·哈维森是一位色盲艺术家，他花费多年时间终于找到了一种感受周围世界色彩的方法，足以让你大开眼界。

For the past 10 years, Neil has been wearing an external electronic eye that picks up the frequencies of the colors before him and converts them into sound vibrations that he can hear. Initially he wore the device outside his head. But later, the London-based artist convinced surgeons to implant the chip int his skull to be able to perceive more intricate colors.

在过去的10年中，尼尔一直戴着一个外置电子眼，它可以把颜色的频率转化成声波，然后尼尔就可以“听见”声音了。最初的时候，他在大脑外部佩戴这一装置，但后来这位伦敦艺术家说服外科医生把芯片植入自己的头盖骨里面，以便获取更细微的颜色。

The idea for the device came about when Neil heard a cybernetics talk by computer scientist Adam Montandon at Dartington College of Arts in 2003. The pair then collaborated to create the device and Neil ended up memorizing various frequencies so he could recognize colors. So he still couldn’t see the colors, he could now hear and identify them.

这一想法源自2003年，尼尔在达林顿艺术学院听了一场科学家亚当·蒙坦顿有关自动控制学的讲座。然后这两个人就合作创造了这一装置，后来尼尔通过记忆不同频率来辨识颜色。所以，尽管他还是不能看见颜色，但他可以“听见”并辨识出来。

Neil, who was born with achromatopsia (a rare condition that allows him to see only black or white), said during a talk in 2017: “For me the sky is always grey, flowers are always grey and television is black and white. But since the age of 21 instead of seeing color I can hear color. I started to have favorite colors and I started to dream in color.”

尼尔是全色盲（只能看见黑色和白色），他在2017年的一次座谈会上说：“对我来说，天空是灰的，花儿是灰的，电视是黑白的。但是从21岁起，我可以听见颜色了，我开始有了自己最喜欢的颜色，并且我做的梦也有了色彩。”

At this point, Neil felt that the software and his brain had united, because in his dreams it wasn’t the software creating the electronic sounds, but his brain. So he decided to have the device implanted permanently.

这时候，尼尔感觉芯片软件和自己的大脑已经联为一体，因为在梦里的颜色并不是电子眼产生的声音，而是源自他自己的大脑，所以他决定永久植入这块芯片。

The cyborg antenna, or ‘eyeborg’ that Neil now wears is like a long tube with an audio input on one end that is implanted at back of his skull. At the other end is a camera that ‘sees’ the colors before they are transformed to sound. Because every color has a different vibration, Neil is able to distinguish between different images, paintings and faces (each of them has a distinct sound).

尼尔所佩戴的机械天线“电子眼”，看上去就像一端带有摄像头、另一端植入头盖骨的长管。由于每种颜色都有一个不同的频率，所以尼尔能够辨别不同的图像、画作或脸庞（每种图像的声音都不同）。

In fact, he can even hear colors that the human eye cannot perceive, like infrared and ultraviolet. And the reverse is also true – he is able to make color paintings of the voices of personalities like Hitler and Martin Luther King. He doesn’t even have to actually look at the colors. The images can be sent directly from his mobile phone to a Wi-Fi or Bluetooth connector inside the chip. It’s actually unbelievable – Neil is the first person in the world who can experience an image without actually looking at it.

事实上，他甚至能听到人眼无法识别的颜色，如红外线和紫外线。“听声音”的逆过程也是可以实现的，他可以根据人物声音，比如希特勒和马丁·路德·金的声音，画出彩色画。他甚至不用看颜色，这些图像可以通过他的手机直接发送到芯片内部的无线或蓝牙。在该仪器的帮助下，尼尔成为世界上第一个不用看就可以感觉到图像的人。

The implantation of the chip was done in a series of surgeries that took place between December and March in Barcelona. Neil said that the eyeborg has now become such an integral part of his identity that he even convinced authorities to let him take his passport photograph with it.

芯片移植由12月至次年3月的多次外科手术完成。尼尔说电子眼现在已经成为他整个身体的一部分，他甚至还说服官方让自己戴着它拍护照相片。

What’s really great about the eyeborg is not what it can do, but its future potential. Just think of the possibilities – Neil is connecting with devices now, but if more people get the implant, skull-to-skull communication might just be possible. It’s too fascinating!

“电子眼”真正伟大之处不在于它的功能，而是它未来的发展潜力。让我们思考一下未来的可能性吧：尼尔现在使用这一装置，但如果更多的人植入芯片，就可以直接通过大脑进行交流了。简直太迷人了！