Feb

The Colorful Life of a Human Cyborg

by Meredith Mullins on February 6, 2014

Neil Harbisson, a human cyborg, wearing a head device which expands his senses for creative expression (Photo © Dan Wilton/Red Bulletin)

Neil Harbisson, cyborg and artist, changing the world of senses.
© Dan Wilton/Red Bulletin

Neil Harbisson: Expanding the Boundaries of Creative Expression

He can hear a Picasso painting.

He can paint a Mozart serenade.

He stands for hours in a supermarket aisle listening to a symphony of rainbow-colored cleaning bottles.

He composes music from faces.

This is Neil Harbisson, human cyborg. His senses defy tradition. His creative expression is unique.

He was born to a colorless world, where, in his words, “the sky is always gray and television is still in black and white.”

But, because he believes that everyone should wish to perceive what they can’t perceive, he was driven to extend his sensory perception.

He wears a cybernetic eye—an “eyeborg”—that translates colors into sounds on a musical scale (and vice versa). Pretty cool.

His “Oh, I see moments” become “Oh, I hear moments” . . . and beyond.

black and white landscape, showing that lack of color is a challenge for creative expression (Photo © Meredith Mullins)

A world without vibrant blue sky and a hundred shades of spring green
© Meredith Mullins

A World in Black and White and Shades of Gray

What would it be like to spend your life seeing only black and white and a range of gray tones—to never know the blueness of an open sky or the multitude of greens that emerge as trees come alive in spring?

color landscape, showing inspiration for creative expression (Photo © Meredith Mullins)

A new world
© Meredith Mullins

Neil was born with a rare color vision disorder that creates a gray-scale world. At first his parents thought he was just confused by the names of colors. Doctors thought he was colorblind. His classmates teased him when his socks didn’t match.

At age 11, he was officially diagnosed with achromatopsia. He could not see color at all.

The Eyeborg

Over time, he tried to make sense of color— to associate colors with people. For example, when someone talked about the color blue, he thought of a friend who was very brainy. He created his own world.

When he went on to study music in college, fate introduced him to cybernetics expert Adam Montandon. The result was a collaborative invention—the “eyeborg”— that would enable Neil to hear color.

Neil Harbisson , a human cyborg, using the eyeborg to translate the color orange into a sound so he can use his senses for creative expression (Photo © Dan Wilton/Red Bulletin)

The eyeborg translates “orange” into a musical note.
© Dan Wilton/Red Bulletin

The eyeborg translates light waves (colors) into sound waves, by linking each color to a note or frequency on the musical scale. A camera mounted on Neil’s head scans the colors in front of him and transmits the sound through a chip in the back of his head.

He had to memorize the names of colors and the frequencies associated with each hue, but eventually that became subliminal.

“When I started to dream in color, I felt the software and my brain had united,” he explains. “That’s when I called myself a cyborg.”

He grew more and more comfortable wearing the device on his head. He wore it everywhere—to sleep . . . and even in the shower.

Colorful cleaning products on a grocery shelf, illustrating how Neil Harbisson, a human cyborg standing nearby, will hear a symphony of sounds via his eyeborg. (Photo © Meredith Mullins)

As Harbisson says, “In the supermarket, the cleaning product aisle becomes a symphony.”
© Meredith Mullins

And, finally, he appeared on his passport photo complete with his headgear (after a battle with the British authorities, who don’t allow official photographs with electronic equipment). Neil convinced them that the eyeborg was a part of his body.

As advanced as the eyeborg is, Neil still has to plug himself in periodically to charge his antenna through a USB port at the back of his head. He looks forward to the day when he doesn’t have to depend on electricity. He hopes to use his own blood circulation to keep the device charged.

Neil Harbisson, a human cyborg, plugged into wall, recharging the device that expands his senses for creative expression (Photo © Dan Wilton/Red Bulletin)

Time out for recharging
© Dan Wilton/Red Bulletin

Exploring Creative Frontiers

In a world of science fiction, robotic prowess, and Google Glass, Neil is an unexpected hero. He uses his new perceptions as creative power, breaking boundaries between sound and sight, art and science.

He is the ultimate listener—listening to art, his environment, and the people he meets.

“The way I perceive beauty has changed,” he admits. “When I look at someone, I hear their face. Someone might look beautiful but sound terrible.”

His taste in art has changed. Certain painters, like Rothko and Miró, produce very clear notes. Others produce clashing chords because of the colors they use.

He performs in concerts by playing the colors of the audience. He preempts review with this caveat, “The good thing about this is that if the concert doesn’t sound good it’s their fault, not my fault.”

He creates sound portraits, so that people can “hear” their faces. He’s also working on a sound portrait of Venice, with other cities to come.

Then, in a creative reversal of fortunes, he turns musical notes or frequencies into visual art. He paints Vivaldi, Bach, Beethoven, and Rachmaninov and creates visual impressions of famous speeches.

Neil Harbisson's painting of Mozart's Queen of the Night, creative expression inspired by hearing color. (Image © Neil Harbisson)

A sonochromatic painting of Mozart’s Queen of the Night
© Neil Harbisson

A Cyborg Gathers No Moss

Neil continues to push the boundaries with his work. Regular human color vision includes the visible spectrum of light. But, that’s not enough for a cyborg.

He has added both infrared and ultraviolet light to his audible wavelengths, giving him the advantage of being able to detect motion sensors and of knowing when it’s safe to sunbathe.

Neil Harbisson, a human cyborg, wearing yellow, an inspiration of creative expression (Photo © Dan Wilton/Red Bulletin)

Neil used to dress to look good. Now he dresses to “sound” good.
© Dan Wilton/Red Bulletin

He has also created the Cyborg Foundation to help humans become cyborgs, to promote the use of cybernetics as part of the human body, and to defend cyborg rights.

“Life will be much more exciting when we stop creating applications for mobile phones and start creating them for our body,” Neil says.

Spoken like a true cyborg . . . and an artist who understands the value of extending the senses for unparalleled creative expression.

Photographs courtesy of The Cyborg Foundation and Dan Wilton/Red Bulletin.

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Meredith Mullins 4 Comments

Innovations/The World's Art & Design/The World's Music

Nov

How Creative Thinking Kicks The Soccket Ball to Success

by Sheron Long on November 7, 2013

Brain-shaped light bulb symbolizing the power of creative thinking to solve problems

When brain power lights up and creative thinking flows, people find the
good ideas that solve perplexing problems.
© iStock

Powered by Play

In 2008, for an engineering project at Harvard, Jessica O. Matthews teamed up with Julia Silverman, to prototype a soccer ball that traps kinetic energy during play and then turns the energy into a light source.

They called it the SOCCKET because a light inserted into the ball uses the stored energy for power. Thirty minutes of play harnesses enough energy to power a LED light for three hours.

During soccer play, a pendulum-like mechanism inside the SOCCKET captures the kinetic energy and stores it in the ball for later use as an off-grid power source.
© Uncharted Play Team

In 2011, Matthews and Silverman co-founded Uncharted Play to produce the SOCCKET and thereby harness the power of play as a power source for people.

Their story is a fascinating one on how creative thinking, fortitude, and perspiration lead to successful products. And their work illustrates (at least) five stages of creative problem-solving.

1. Seeing the Need

Over 1.3 billion people worldwide lack access to electricity that is reliable, affordable, clean, and safe.

As a result, households use dangerous sources of power, such as kerosene lamps and diesel generators, which cause nearly 2 million deaths per year and harm the environment. According to Uncharted Play, “Living with fumes from one kerosene lamp is the equivalent of smoking two packs of cigarettes every day.”

Jessica O. Matthews, who applied creative thinking to invent the SOCCKET ball. Image © Uncharted Play Team.

Jessica Matthews,
CEO of Uncharted Play
© Uncharted Play Team

Matthews explains how she came to understand the need:

Just a few months before the SOCCKET was first developed, I visited Nigeria for my uncle’s wedding. I remember very distinctively choking on the fumes of a diesel generator outside their house.

My cousins said, “Don’t worry, you’ll get used to it.” Their complacency really bothered me.

2. Putting Two and Two Together

Though her relatives didn’t want to change the situation, Matthews noticed that they did want to play soccer:

Around my aunt’s compound, kids were kicking around whatever they could find. I even saw kids playing soccer with a bottle cap. Still, their skills were more impressive than those seen in a FIFA level game.

As often happens in a creative “Oh, I see” moment, Matthews combined the two ideas and the inspiration for the SOCCKET came alive.

Typographic art using two light bulbs to replace the o's in "Solution" and symbolizing how creative thinking is often seeing the connection between two disparate ideas. Image © iStock.

Often, it takes seeing the connection between TWO disparate ideas to come up with a creative solution.
© iStock

The solution she envisioned would use people’s passion for play to create the power for households, allowing kids to study and families to accomplish tasks after dark.

Boy studying after dark with the light of the SOCCKET, a creative solution for families in energy-deprived locations. Image © Uncharted Play Team.

The SOCCKET can provide light to read at night in developing nations.
© Uncharted Play Team

3. Getting the Idea Off the Ground

After prototyping the SOCCKET for their engineering project, Matthews and Silverman (who were studying to be social scientists, not engineers) discovered the inevitable obstacles that come with pursuing an idea.

In an interview with Inc., Matthews discussed how she ran into an engineering community that insisted “there was no way to build a ball that would be light enough to kick and capable of generating substantial energy.”

That’s where the perspiration came in. She “taught herself the basics of soldering, building circuitry boards, and whatever else it would take to bring the idea to fruition.” The final SOCCKET weighs only one ounce more than a soccer ball.

Soccer balls rising from grass, symbolizing how a creative idea gets off the ground.

Textbook Example: As happens with many ideas, it was harder to get
the SOCCKET off the ground than to think it up.
© iStock

Matthews also had to maintain a strong belief in the value of her idea. As she says of the SOCCKET:

I knew it would be a good product at the very least. I never once said that it could be huge; I only said that it was meaningful. I was very persistent in my belief the SOCCKET would matter to people in a way that made it worth continuing its development. So I pursued it.

And she gives due credit to her naiveté in business, citing it as an advantage in not worrying about what could stop her.

4. Going for Quality

On the journey from the creative idea to the quality solution, Matthew’s company recognized the importance of testing, listening, debriefing, redesigning, and retesting.

The SOCCKET after plenty of use in field trials that are essential to creative problem-solving. Image © Uncharted Pay Team.

Companies with a commitment to quality always kick around a new product before its release.
The SOCCKET took plenty of kicks in field trials this fall in Nigeria.
© Uncharted Play Team

So far, over 10,000 SOCCKETS have been tested in Central and South America, Africa, and in a few communities in the USA.

New ideas emerged, so the SOCCKET that goes on sale in the next few months will also come in a Portable Power Kit—one SOCCKET and ten portable lamps that remain lit for an hour after a 25-second charge from the SOCCKET.

Diagram showing how multiple lamps can be charged from one SOCCKET and representing the importance of product testing in reaching creative solutions. © Uncharted Play Team.

Testing a product leads to improvements. Uncharted Play identified the need to charge multiple lights from one SOCCKET and to make the lights portable.
© Uncharted Play Team

According to Uncharted Play, “That way, children living in off-grid communities can play with a single SOCCKET ball as a team at school and still have their own personal light for reading . . . each night.”

5. Keep Asking “What’s Next?”

Consistent with its mission to inspire people around the world to lead playful lives and to foster well-being from that play, Matthew’s company keeps the creative thinking going.

For the developing world, it has prototyped other energy-generating play “tools,” like jump ropes that hold four times as much power as the SOCCKET.

For the developed world, it has created a smart soccer ball called Ludo, due out in 2014. A motion sensor detects time used in play. The number of minutes are converted into Play Points that individuals can “spend” to direct donations from sponsors to social development projects.

It looks like the power of play will keep such creative problem-solving going for years to come!

Jessica O. Matthews and Julia Silverman were honored by the Harvard Foundation in 2012 as “Scientists of the Year.” To keep up with the latest at Unchartered Play, check their Facebook page.

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Sheron Long 2 Comments

Clever Ideas/Innovations/Making a Difference/The World's Entrepreneurs

Jul

Paris Expo: Bravos and Bouquets for Urban Gardens

by Sheron Long on July 15, 2013

Roses on display at Paris Garden Show, featuring creative ideas in urban gardening. Image © Sheron Long

A bouquet of roses brightens a rainy day at Jardins, Jardin Aux Tuileries, annual Paris garden show.
© Sheron Long

Creative Ideas Find Fertile Ground

Plenty of creative ideas grew in the Paris salon of Gertrude Stein (early 1900s), including her famous quote:

A rose is a rose is a rose.

Though generally interpreted to mean that “things are what they say they are,” I’m not so sure that’s the case when it comes to the term “garden show.”

A garden show is a garden show is not just a garden show when it’s in Paris.

This year, the Paris garden show known as Jardins, Jardin Aux Tuileries staged its magic in the Tuileries Garden—a stunning display of beauty (superbe, as the French say) and fertile ground for creative ideas in urban gardening.

Can’t Go Out? Go Up!—The Beauty of Vertical Gardens

I bought my ticket to beauty and was enchanted from the moment I saw wispy fabric waving in the wind.

Wall of roses at Jardins, Jardin Aux Tuileries, a Paris Expo featuring creative ideas in urban gardening. Image © Sheron Long

What was behind it? A vertical garden of roses—pink and mauve and white and red—created by landscape architect Nicolas Gilsoul for Champagne Laurent-Perrier, a participant in the annual event for the past nine years.

Wall of Roses at Jardins, Jardin Aux Tuileries, a Paris garden show featuring creative ideas in urban gardening. Image © Sheron Long

OK, a rose is a rose is a rose, but when I saw 10,000 of them in a vertical garden three times my height, I had to elaborate: Oh-là-là!

Vertical gardens have been around at least since the Hanging Gardens of Babylon in 600 BC. Today, however, they are a new and creative way to address issues in the urban environment.

Green, living urban walls bring to city dwellers the beauty and nature that has long been associated with health and well-being.
Vertical gardens play a role in controlling temperatures inside buildings.
Some vertical gardens are farms, growing food to feed the increasing urban population.

Vertical gardens are as varied as any landscape. See 39 more here.

Do Creative Ideas Change with the Times?

Jardins, Jardin Aux Tuileries, in partnership with the Louvre Museum, formerly the royal residence at the east end of the Tuileries Garden, began the annual event ten years ago.

Each year, the show addresses creative gardening ideas.

Sign honoring Le Notre to whom Jardins, Jardin Aux Tuileries dedicated its garden show that features creative ideas in urban gardening. Image © Sheron Long

This year’s event honored landscape architect André Le Nôtre (1613–1700) for his creative genius upon the 400th anniversary of his birth.

Le Nôtre was born into a family of gardeners to kings and was trained in the Tuileries Garden, which he modified between 1666 and 1672.

He is perhaps best known for creating the grand gardens at Versailles for Louis XIV.

Creative ideas often spring from need. Le Notre’s creative challenge was to “think big,” generating ideas that worked on a vast scale, whereas urban spaces today often demand creative ideas that work on a small scale.

Times change, and so do creative solutions.

Somehow, I was sure that Le Nôtre would approve of today’s artists, designers, and landscape architects who are working “small” and “up” to bring beauty to urban spaces.

Ugly Sidewalks? Dress Them Up with Dadagreen®

When I saw this gentleman dressed up as Le Nôtre in the Dadagreen® exhibit, I knew I would find creative ideas there.

Actor playing Le Notre at the 2013 Paris garden admiring the creative ideas in urban gardening in the Dadagreen exhibit. Image © Paule Kingleur

Bringing beauty to fences and grills along streets and bridges, by hospitals and schools, to your balcony—that’s the goal of Dadagreen®, innovative flower pots that combine two old ideas—saddlebags and container gardening—to create fertile ground for an urban garden.

Dadagreen® flower boxes straddling urban railings, a creative idea in urban gardening. Image © Paule Kingleur

Dadagreen®, the concept of Paule Kingleur, founder of Paris Label, consists of two saddlebags handmade of recycled tarp and decorated with eye-catching photographs. Filled with dirt, the innovative pots welcome flowers, greenery, and even vegetables for those who want to create a kitchen garden on their street.

The Dadagreen, a creative idea in urban gardening, is planted with zucchini. Image © Paule Kingleur

How Do Creative Ideas Sprout and Grow?

In Paule Kingleur’s case, one gray November day, she saw a colorful child’s bonnet with stripes perched atop a street pole, one of those ugly anti-parking barriers.

She noticed how the bonnet dressed up the sidewalk. Committed to an urban life, Paule also believes in the right of urban dwellers to connect with nature.

That’s when she had an “Oh, I see” moment, realizing that she could hang pretty containers, called Potogreens, on existing poles to create micro-gardens and beauty in urban spaces.

Many new ideas are born like this. And often, the first idea leads to another. Later, Paule created the larger Dadagreen® where bigger urban gardens can thrive.

Where will Paule’s ideas go next? All over the city. Not content with prettying up a static sidewalk space, Paule threw the Dadagreen® saddlebags on a bike to take beauty on the road! Now, that’s a creative idea that fits our times!

Bicycle with Dadagreen® flower boxes, a creative idea in urban gardening. Image © Sheron Long

At Jardins, Jardin Aux Tuileries 2013, the rose wall by Nicolas Gilsoul won the Prix Coup de Coeur (“Lovestruck” Award).

Paule Kingleur’s Dadagreen® won the Prix Innovation Cité Vert (Prize for Green City Innovation).

The name Dadagreen® is a combination of the English word “green,” denoting its green mission, and “dada,” a childish nickname for horse, reflecting its characteristic of a straddle (and a wink at the Dadaist-Surrealist movement).

Comment on this post below, or inspire insight with your own OIC Moment here.

Sheron Long 1 Comment

Clever Ideas/France (Paris)/Innovations

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