I finally got around to digitizing the X-ray image I took of the magnetic implants I have in the fingers of my left hand. The image below shows the location of the implanted disc magnet within the pad of the ring finger.

It has been a year and a month since I had a tiny magnet implanted into the middle and ring fingers of my left hand as a central part of my MEng research project in which I was exploring a novel man-machine interface based on these subdermal magnetic implants. The magnets are still in there, safe and sound and still allowing me to "feel" magnetic fields everywhere around me - like around wires, washing machines, microwaves, ATMs, supermarket checkouts, power supplies, hard disks, fans etc. The research is still continuing as we now have another student at the University of Reading Cybernetics department who has gotten the same implants and are providing a second set of data on the properties of the interface.

Anyway, I wanted to share the video of the implantation procedure (blood-filled as it maybe) just posted on YouTube by Mac McCarthy who had performed the procedure on me. The doctors at the university medical practice had refused to do the procedure due to safety and insurance concerns so I had had to find an alternative means of getting the magnets implanted. It took a fair bit digging and looking around before I found Mac's Punctured Body Modification shop. I was slightly nervous at the start since it was the first time that Mac was attempting to perform a procedure of the kind but luckily everything went quite smoothly. It was an interesting experience; sitting in a chair, watching keenly as my fingers were cut, probed, magnet shoved in and incision stitched while blood oozed out...

I mentioned briefly but vaguely in a recent post that I was playing guinea pig in some work I was doing as part of my research project at university. Well, it turns out being the guinea pig in this case translates into getting two tiny neodymium (rare-earth metal, high field-strength) magnets implanted into the pads of the middle and index fingers of my left hand!

Magnetic implants (of the sorts I have) are by no means new - a body modification artist called Samppa is said to have experimented with them in the late 90's. However, I became aware of them around 2006 when Wired carried an article by Quinn Norton about her getting such an implant. I was very intrigued by the experiences reported in the article and and by the time I finished reading everything about magnetic implants I could find on the net, I had a few experiments I wanted to run and was itching to get one myself. As I had mentioned in a blog post I made back then, I was mostly interested in the sensory extension that was reported to be brought on by the magnet responding ever so slightly to external electromagnetic fields (such as that produced by current-carrying wires, motors etc). The work I'm doing now essentially involves basic scientific exploration of the effect and building on the ideas I had originally towards a practical application.

The video below shows me playing around with magnets similar to which I have inside my fingers. No real point here, other than just play and a little demonstration of the strength of the implanted magnets I'll post more details on the type of magnet and the implantation process a bit later...

I've been experimenting with a potential "new" type of machine-man interface for a little while now. In the process, I've subjected myself to a bit of mutilation, pain and general annoyance. But today, I'm quite happy because I have now obtained some very interesting results...

Hopefully, will share more about the work in the coming weeks/months.