When Neil Harbisson discovered that he suffered from achromatopsia (a condition that limits his sight to shades of grey) he decided to turn himself into the world’s first officially recognised cyborg by having an antenna implanted that encodes light frequencies and transforms them into vibrations to turn them into sounds.

With the aim of creating a special gift for members of Audi’s innovation platform, we asked ourselves, “How could we experience the way that Neil hears colours and perceives his environment?”

Answering that question inspired us to create “Happy Colour to You”, the first birthday song performed in colours.

A series of illustrations with totally different styles but with a common pattern: their composition functions like a pentagram that allows you to move your mobile phone over it and listen to the song.

The first step of the process involved selecting the colours for each note. Using a digital palette and through his antenna, Neil detected the seven colours corresponding to the seven notes of “Happy Birthday”.

Eton blue generates a C, b’dazzled blue a D, palatinate purple an E, amaranth purple an F, carrot orange a G, khaki X 11 Light an A, and dark olive green a B.

Using this colour scale and the notes in the order they play in the musical score, Neil created the different illustrations to function like a pentagram.

For the musical composition we worked closely with the Konga Music Agency. Firstly, we created a musical base that would give the piece the right tone and timbre while maintaining a neutral rhythm. It was important to make it adaptable to whatever rhythm the user decided to experiment with when moving the mobile and scanning the colours.

For the notes that we would associate with the different colours, we chose a classical piano to provide a nostalgic and emotional touch to a moment as heartfelt as a birthday celebration.

For the technological development we worked with the Antiloop studio. Using the source code of Neil’s antenna, we created a bespoke software that associated the 256 colours from a conventional camera with their corresponding note and tone. That way, using any smartphone, you could move it over the different surfaces and be able to hear the notes the way Neil does. And with our illustrations, you could listen to “Happy Birthday”.