Neil Harbisson (born 27th July 1982) is a Catalan-raised British-Irish-American cyborg artist and activist for transpecies rights. He was born with a rare condition, achromatic vision – total colour blindness. When he grew older he recognised that lack of ability to sense colour was giving him a lot of disadvantages because surrounding society is inherently designed for people able to perceive the colours. In 2003, him and Adam Montandon, started to develop antenna which would allow him to hear colours as musical notes generated by simple sine waves. Antenna over the time evolved from connection to headphones and 5 kg backpack worn on his back into a small chip eventually implanted into his skull conducting the sound into ears via bone conduction in 2004.

The surgery was performed by an anonymous surgeon since the bio-ethical committee didn’t approve the surgery considering it non-ethical. Neil Harbisson got into another legal obstacles since he had to convince British offices to allow him appearing with the antenna on the passport. At first they denied his request as unacceptable since it is not allowed to appear on passport with electronic devices but after many months he convinced them that the antenna isn’t a device but a new organ and he cannot simply remove it. He is also in touch Swedish offices claiming Swedish citizenship since the antennas parts were made in Sweden. According to Swedish law, one can become Swedish after living in Sweden at least 5 years. Neil Harbisson argue his claim by the fact the part of Sweden has been living in him way much longer than 5 years.

Neil Harbisson described the process of becoming a cyborg more as psychological. Firstly, he memorised notes as colours, then later they became perception as he didn’t need to think about them and the information of “sound-colour” became automatic. When he started to have dreams in colours, Neil realised, that he truly became a cyborg as his consciousness merged with the software on a deeper level.

Antenna can perceive colours beyond the range of human perception. It can sense infra-red and ultra-violet colours. It can be also connected to internet and sense colours being send from another parts of the world, even from deep space when connected to satellites. From this point of view Neil consider himself ‘a sensetronaut’ as he can explore outer space with his newly obtained sense whist physically remaining on this planet.

Neil consider himself as a cyborg artist. He enjoys to create sound portraits of human faces or dressing himself in a way which not necessarily ‘looks good’ but according to if it ‘sounds good’. In 2010, him and Moon Ribas, another cyborg artist, Cyborg Foundation. It is an institution helping to people to become cyborgs. They believe that extending humans perception by creating new sense new forms of intelligence and wisdom and often has very ecological aspect to it. Neil Harbisson for example said that if everyone had a night vision, cities wouldn’t need to consume vast amounts of electric energy at night, which would be beneficial for the environment.