Last week cyborg-artist Manel De Aguas began surgery for the purpose of implanting two devices that he calls ‘weather fins’ into his head. These weather fins are supposed to let him not just perceive elements of the weather such as atmospheric pressure, temperature and humidity, but to perceive and hear them as sound.

Two days ago on January 13, De Aguas announced that the whole surgical procedure was finally completed:

“The new stage of my metamorphosis has officially started! Today I finally installed my self-designed weather fins in my head,” De Aguas, now the world’s first human weather station, announced.

The two fins, which look like large white seashells, lie above his ears and conspicuously stick out on the sides of his head. At a distance, they can look like large cat ears or the wings on the helmet of Hermes the Greek god. De Aguas says that for now, he needs a headband to hold the weight of the fins.

The weather fins are attached to his temporal bones, through which the ‘sounds’ of the weather are transmitted via bone conduction, allowing De Aguas to ‘hear’ the weather.

De Aguas, who is a co-founder of Transpecies Society, an interdisciplinary project that advocates for non-human identities and freedom of self-design, had the surgery in Japan. The 23 year old Barcelona native and resident explained that the reason he traveled to Japan is because he could not find any surgeon in Spain willing to perform the surgery.

De Aguas has used this predicament to highlight the need for the normalization of such surgeries, stating, “The normalization of transpecies surgeries is still something that we need to advocate for, and it’s still difficult to find professionals that are willing to do them.”

Manel De Aguas hopes that in the coming years it will be easier to have such surgeries.