Rat Brain Art
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OK, this BBC news item is over three years old. But true weirdness doesn’t date.
Meet the latest spaced out modern artist – a picture-drawing robot arm in Australia whose brain sits in a petri dish in the US.
Working from their university labs in two different corners of the world, American and Australian researchers have created what they call a new class of creative beings: “the semi-living artist”.
Gripping three coloured markers positioned above a white canvas, a robotic arm churns out drawings akin to that of a three-year-old. Its guidance comes from around 50,000 rat neurons in a petri dish 19,000 kilometres away….
…The project represents the team’s effort to create a semi-living entity that learns like the living brains in people and animals do, adapting and expressing itself through art….
…The latest initiative is a development of the SymbioticA Fish And Chips project, in which the artist-scientists grew fish neurons over silicon chips to control a robotic arm that produced drawings and music.