Guy Ben-Ary
Artist in Residence
SymbioticA - the Art & Science Collaborative Research Lab
School of Anatomy & Human Biology
University of Western Australia
MEART - The Semi Living Artist is a geographically detached, bio-cybernetic research and development project exploring aspects of creativity and artistry in the age of new biological technologies.
It is an installation distributed between two (or more) locations in the world. Its ‘brain’ consists of cultured nerve cells that grow and live in a neuro-engineering lab, in Atlanta (Dr. Steve Potter’s lab). Its ‘body’ is a robotic drawing arm that is capable of producing two-dimensional drawings. The ‘brain’ and the ‘body’ will communicate in real time with each other for the duration of the festival.
MEART is assembled from:
‘Wetware’ - neurons from embryonic rat cortex grown over a Multi Electrode Array.
‘Hardware’ - the robotic drawing arm
‘Software’ - that interfaces between the wetware and the hardware.
The Internet is used to mediate between its components and overcome its geographical detachment.
MEART is suggesting future scenarios where humans will create/grow/manufacture intuitive and creative ‘thinking entities’ that could be intelligent and unpredictable beings. They may be created by humans for anthropocentric use, but as they will be creative and unpredictable they might not necessarily stay the way they were originally intended.
We refer to the wetware/software/hardware hybrid we created as a Semi-Living artist as it is made of both living and artificial components; partly grown ñ partly constructed. While the artistic values of the outcomes of the process (the marks on paper left by the drawing arm) are still in the eye of the beholder, the questions regarding the possibilities are real. What will happen when such a system starts to express qualities that are considered uniquely human aptitudes such as art? Its identity extends beyond our cultural comprehension of living systems. Made from living biological matter, mechanics and electronics simultaneously, it questions the viewer’s perceptions of the concept of sentience.
MEART has a technologically created identity. It is an identity created as a result of the progression and combination of various technologies. Its ‘brain’ is growing in Atlanta and its ‘body’ (or multi bodies) could be anywhere in the world thus highlighting the ubiquitous nature of its existence and identity.
This work explores questions such as: What is creativity? What creates value in art? One way of looking at these issues might be by thinking about creativity along a spectrum, from a reductionist mechanical device, to an artistic genius. What is it that makes a person a genius? Perhaps it is the ability to link together diverse inputs. We hope that our cultured neurons will have the potential to show signs of very basic ‘learning’ or ‘creativity’.
MEART has the ability to sense the outside world through a camera that acts as its eyes. It has the ability to process what it sees through the neurons that act as its brain. It has the ability to react accordingly through the robotic drawing arm that acts as its body. The Internet functions as its nervous system. MEART is a geographically detached entity ubiquitous on many levels.
We will set up living neural cultures (‘MEART’s Brain’) in Dr. Steve Potter’s lab at Georgia Institute of Technology, Atlanta. Potter is one of the leading neuroscientists in the field of Learning in Vitro and is developing a new paradigm for neurobiology research. He is applying different technologies to study dissociated cultures of hundreds or thousands of mammalian neurons.
An experiment will be performed in order to explore the relationships between the input/stimulation to the neuronal culture and the output/drawings.
A web cam will capture portraits of viewers within the gallery space. These images will be then converted into a stimulation map and will be used to stimulate the neurons (this is the beginning of a drawing process). A multi channel electrophysiological recording from a neuronal culture (ìMEARTS brainî) will be performed in Potterís lab. The resulting data sets will be processed in two locations ñ the lab & the gallery. The processed outcome will be used to control and move the drawing arm. The progress of the drawing will be monitored and compared with the original portrait. The difference between the original portrait and the progressing drawing will be then sent back to the lab as another stimulation map to complete the feedback loop and this whole process will continue until a threshold of marks on paper will be passed. This will be the end of a drawing (See appendix number 1 for a visual explanation of ‘how it works’)
This piece traces its influences from an array of artistic, scientific and technological streams. Areas such as interactive art, cybernetics, kinetic and robotic art, artificial life/intelligence and biology are all linked to the project. Other influences are the different representations and use of animals in contemporary arts, from the use of elephants to produce ‘art’ to the use of living and recently living animals/bodies (or parts of the body) as art works.
From an historical context, artists have always been concerned with imitating life and with giving life/animating qualities to non-living entities. Technology has also joined forces with art forms to create more sophisticated types of artificial life systems and ‘intelligent’ machines. The uniqueness of MEART is the attempt to create an intelligent artificial/biological artist that has in itself the capability or potential to be creative. We are focusing on creating the artist rather than the artwork. MEART proposes to embody the fusion of biology and the machine - creativity emerging from a semi-living entity.
MEART evolved from Fish & Chips (presented in Ars Electronica 2001) and has been exhibited twice before in the ‘BioFeel Exhibition’, Perth, Australia and ‘ArtBots exhibition’ in NYC, USA. As it is an on-going R&D project, itís constantly evolving, changing and progressing technologically and conceptually. ‘MEART - The Semi Living Artist’
SymbioticA Research Group
SymbioticA - The Art & Science Collaborative Research Lab
School of Anatomy & Human Biology
University of Western Australia
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