Hi, I’m Neil Harbisso. I come from a place where the sky is always grey, where flowers are always grey, and where television is still in black and white.
I actually come from a world where color doesn’t exist. I was born with achromatopsia. I was born completely color-blind. So I’ve never seen color, and don’t know what it looks like. But since the age of 21, I can hear color thanks to a magic electronic eye called “eyeborg”: a color sensor between my eyes connected to a chip(芯片) installed at the back of my head that transforms color frequencies into sound frequencies that I hear through my bone.
I’ve had the electronic eye permanently attached to my head and I’ve been listening to colors nonstop since 2004. So I find it completely normal now to hear colors all the time.
Since I started to hear color, my life has changed significantly. Art galleries have become concert halls. I can hear a Picasso. And supermarkets have become like night clubs. I love how they sound.
My sense of beauty has changed. Someone might look very beautiful but sound terrible, and someone might sound very harmonious but look awful. So I find it really exciting to create sound portraits(画像) of people. Instead of drawing the shape of someone’s face I write down the different notes I hear when I look at them, and then I send them an mp3 of their face. Each face sounds different. I can even give face concerts now, concerts where I play the audience’s faces. The good thing about doing this is that if the concert doesn’t sound good, it’s their fault.
I also found out that things I thought were colorless are not colorless at all. Cities are not grey. Lisbon is yellow turquoise(宝石绿); London is very golden red…and humans are not black and white. Human skins range from light shades of orange to very dark shades of orange. We are all orange.
If we extend our senses, we will consequently extend our knowledge.
【小题1】We can infer from the article that people with achromatopsia ____________.| A．suffer from blindness |
| B．have a good sense of colors |
| C．are not able to see colors |
| D．like to go to concert halls and supermarkets |
| A．Art galleries have been changed into various sounds. |
| B．Works at the art galleries are created by great musicians. |
| C．Art galleries are filled with noisy people. |
| D．The author now likes art galleries as much as concert halls. |
| A．Neil developed a rare disease in his childhood. |
| B．The eyeborg produces sounds based on shades of colors. |
| C．Neil will use the eyeborg for the rest of his life. |
| D．In Neil’s mind, all people are orange. |
| A．Eyeborg – a real life saver. | B．I listen to color. |
| C．Sense the world. | D．Art galleries turned into concert halls. |
