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The man who hears colour

bbc.co.uk

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Re: The man who hears colour

#21

Post by Retric »

bobby07 wrote: post #20

This does look really cool, however, surly his resolution is only 1 pixel? He is limited to hearing one note at a time, therefore he can only perceive one color at a time? Am I missing the point?

Your ears decode multiple frequency's at the same time so nothing limits things to a single color at a time.

But, this is for someone who literally could not perceive color at all but can still see. If he waves it around he can probably quickly tell that the wall is blue or white and then focus on extracting details from things he finds interesting.

Re: The man who hears colour

#22

Post by noonespecial »

Last year I was attacked by three policemen at a demonstration who thought I was filming them. I told them I was listening to colours, but they thought I was mocking them and tried to pull the camera off my head.

For some reason, this strikes me as particularly awful. Not that police don't want to be filmed, that's predictably repugnant for its own clear reasons. Its that they had no problem ripping a prosthesis off someone before even bothering to try to understand it because it looked different. What's next, wrestling old folk to the ground and ripping out their hearing aids because they might be recording devices? Will there be an unwritten "normalcy code" that disabled people will have to follow to avoid assault?

Re: The man who hears colour

#23

Post by Lockyy »

fab1an wrote: post #16

Some context: there is an entire neuroscientific field of study devoted to substituting one sensory modality with another: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sensory_substitution The field was pioneered by Paul Bach-y-Rita ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Bach-y-Rita ) who most notably invented a setup that allowed blind people to "see" via a camera connected to a vibrating grid attached to their their backs, effectivel…

I'm curious if for blind people the back stimulation system for seeing things would start to produce visuals in a way similar to normal sight. Similar to the possiblity that ultrasound used by bats might allow them to "see."

Also, I really want to get one of those compass-belts. It seems like an incredible experiencee. I wonder how it feels to not have it on though. Losing a sense mustn't be the nicest experience.

Re: The man who hears colour

#24

Post by pharrington »

This is some really cool tech. But while light frequencies can obviously be translated into other media we can perceive, "color" as such always comes attached with a ton of spacial information, so I wonder how well the eyeborg conveys that? It seems like this would feel like being extremely nearsighted, which is suggested when he mentions getting close to peoples' faces when doing portraits. I also wonder how much this is a constraint of the technology, and how much are the limits of our sense perception? For example, if the device were able to encode arbitrarily specific spacial information, could one train themselves to be able to instantly distinguish among 100s of unique, simultaneous sounds (like we do with sight), or would the experience always be din?

Re: The man who hears colour

#25

Post by bobby07 »

Retric wrote: post #21
bobby07 wrote: post #20

This does look really cool, however, surly his resolution is only 1 pixel? He is limited to hearing one note at a time, therefore he can only perceive one color at a time? Am I missing the point?

Your ears decode multiple frequency's at the same time so nothing limits things to a single color at a time. But, this is for someone who literally could not perceive color at all but can still see. If he waves it around he can probably quickly tell that the wall is blue or white and then focus on extracting details from things he finds interesting.

Ok, really good points.

Taking onboard what you said, a system could work to match sound volume with direction to see in a higher resolution.

I.e. It would superimpose all color in range together with those closer to the center having a higher amplitude. So the colors directly ahead would be player louder and peripheral colors played quietly.

Or perhaps this is how it works already....

Roughly how many different notes could you hear at a time?

Re: The man who hears colour

#28

Post by owenmarshall »

noonespecial wrote: post #22

Last year I was attacked by three policemen at a demonstration who thought I was filming them. I told them I was listening to colours, but they thought I was mocking them and tried to pull the camera off my head. For some reason, this strikes me as particularly awful. Not that police don't want to be filmed, that's predictably repugnant for its own clear reasons. Its that they had no problem ripping a prosthesis off…

>Will there be an unwritten "normalcy code" that disabled people will have to follow to avoid assault?

You're lying to yourself if you honestly believe that doesn't exist today.

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