"Meart - The Semi-Living Artist" @ Biofeel
The beginning of the collaboration with Dr. Steve Potter
The portrait Series - phase I
In this stage we changed the name of the project as we didn't use fish neurons nor grew them on silicon wafers. MEARTS 'brain' was grown from embryonic rat neurons over a Multi Electrode Array (MEA) hence the name - MEART.
In this phase we began our fruitful collaboration with Dr. Steve Potter (and colleagues), a neuroscientist from the Laboratory for Neuro-engineering, Georgia Institute of Technology. Steve is applying different technologies to study dissociated cultures of hundreds or thousands of mammalian neurons. Furthermore he is developing a real-time feedback system for 2-way communication between a computer and a cultured neural network.
The most significant change that MEART went through (since its first stage - fish and chips) was that it became a geographically detached artist. Its "brain" (dissociated rat neurons grown in culture) was growing in Steve Potters lab in Atlanta, USA and its body was installed in Perth (PICA). The brain and body interacted through the internet (TCP/IP) in real time.
These neurons were cultured over 64 electrodes fitted on a glass substrate (MEA). These electrodes picked up 60 channels of activity from the neurons. The data received from the neural activity was processed both in Atlanta & Perth to control the robotic (drawing) arm in real time.
A static feedback loop
The feedback loop was closed by stimulating the neurons (again, 60 electrodes, 60 different areas in the culture) when various events in the gallery space occured. In Biofeel we had MEART "draw portraits".
We sent a blue print of an image – portrait – to the culture. A pattern to the firing of the network – such that we were trying to change the behaviour or the artwork.
Each morning we captured an image of a visitor in the gallery. Then we degraded it to 60 Pixels that correlated to the 60 electrodes that stimulate the neurons. We used this blue print to constantly stimulate the neurons.
Once we sent stimulation to the neurons we recorded the neural activity and used this data to move the drawing arm. The reading/stimulations occurred every 1-5 seconds. We were interested to see if any emergent or “creative” behavior would occur, or trace any change in the pattern of behavior of the neurons that occurs as a result of the stimulations. The drawings that emerged were very interesting, mainly in their differences.
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