Designing our Senses
How to enhance your world with Sensory Augmentation technology
What if you could feel infra-red light? Or hear colour? Or even read your Twitter posts through vibrations on your skin? And if you could, how would this new sensory information change how you perceive the world around you, or change how you live your life? Through the development of Sensory Augmentation technology we can now begin to explore new sensory experiences that have otherwise been beyond our reach due to our limited sensory capabilities.
Sensory Augmentation is:
the extension of the body’s ability to sense aspects of the environment that are not perceivable by the body in its natural state
The technology can:
- Enhance an existing sense, e.g. giving you hyperspectral vision or ultra-sonic hearing.
- Give the perception of a new sense e.g. giving you animal senses such as magnetoreception or echolocation.
- Or uses an existing sense to convey new information e.g. give you tactile perception of the stock market (transforming text and numbers into patterned vibrations).
So what does this mean? Human senses are limited, we can only perceive, for example, certain sound frequencies and see a small part of the electromagnetic light spectrum. However, birds can also see UV light rays and sense the magnetic field of the planet and dogs have many (many) more smell receptors than us and can hear noises four times as far away as humans can — we can do none of this because our current senses don’t allow it. BUT we can create Sensory Augmentation technology which can give us these sensory abilities that we would otherwise not have.
THE TECHNOLOGY
Sensory Augmentation falls under the broader field of ‘Human Enhancement technology’. This technology could enhance our minds and bodies through ‘science-based and/or technology-based interventions in or on the human body’ (Jensen et al., 2018, p. 5). For Sensory Augmentation this generally means using a device which is worn on, or attached to, the body which gives you the new sensory information.
However, not all technologies that change or extend our senses are regarded as Sensory Augmentation devices, such as:
- Devices that are not used over prolonged periods of time, or are not (semi-) permanently attached to the body. For example, a microscope or telescope can give us temporary enhanced vision, allowing us to see very small or very distant objects which we could not see otherwise. These devices allow us to perceive the sensory quality, but do not give us the sensory quality, i.e. they do not directly change our visual capabilities/how we perceive the world.
- Also excluded are devices which restore impaired senses, such as eyeglasses and hearing aids. These devices are called ‘therapeutic’ technologies as opposed to ‘enhancement’ technologies, as they do not give us extra abilities. (Unless, for example, the hearing aid restored hearing AND gave the wearer better hearing than other humans — then this would be called a ‘therapeutic-enhancement’ technology)
SENSORY ENHANCEMENT TECHNOLOGIES
In 2015, neuroscientists Scott Novich and David Eagleman developed the VEST (Vestibular Extra-Sensory Transducer) which transforms auditory information into patterned vibrations on a subjects’ back. Originally a Sensory Substitution Device (SSD), VEST allowed those with auditory impairments to perceive words and music via the haptic device. The team then input Twitter posts allowing the wearer to perceive tweets through touch, as seen in Eagleman’s TED talk. VEST proved that the wearer can learn to interpret non-sensory information via an existing sense.
Similarly the feelSpace belt, developed by Peter König, and NorthSense by CyborgNest, led by CEO Liviu Babitz, allow the wearer to perceive the direction of the magnetic north by interpreting haptic stimulations (vibrations). This new sensory information is known as magnetoreception, a sense which animals such as birds and turtles have to aid them in navigation. Magnetoreception has not been proven to exist in humans making it novel information for the wearer, and has been shown to augment feelSpace belt wearers’ perception of space (Nagel et al., 2005; Kaspar et al., 2014).
A well-known user of Sensory Augmentation technology is artist Neil Harbisson, who was the first person to be recognised legally as a ‘cyborg’ by a government. Harbisson has achromatopsia, or colour blindness, which drove him to develop the eyeborg which allows him to hear colours through bone conduction. Surgically attached to his skull, the antenna uses a camera and microcomputer to code electromagnetic light waves into sound frequencies (musical notes), including wavelengths of light that are outside of a humans’ visual spectrum, allowing Harbisson to perceive infrared and ultraviolet light.
CHANGING OUR WORLDS
In interviews and his TED talk ‘I listen to colour’ Harbisson explains how the new sensory perception has changed his perceptions and behaviours, such as: dressing himself not by what ‘looks good’ but by what ‘sounds good’; arranging his food to eat his favourite song; and defining beauty by who he thinks ‘sounds beautiful’. Through these perceptual, behavioural, and artistic developments we can see the potential for Sensory Augmentation to enrich our everyday life in unexpected and previously unthought-of ways. Just as the ability to smell enabled the development of perfumes and hearing led to music, novel forms of sensory perception could lead to the development of new practices and modes of expression.
Artists and designers, including myself, have been inspired by figures such as Harbisson who show the opportunities that Sensory Augmentation could bring, inspiring them (us) to design real and speculative technologies which enable us to see, hear, smell, taste and touch the world in new ways.
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