Roland points us to a Georgia Institute of Technology news release announcing that U.S. and Australian researchers have jointly created "a new class of creative beings, 'the semi-living artist'." I don't know what all the fuss is about. I think the last couple of guys I've dated could be described as "semi-living artists," and at least one of them may well have been controlled by rat neurons.
A picture-drawing robot in Perth, Australia whose movements are controlled by the brain signals of cultured rat cells in Atlanta… the robotic drawing arm operates based on the neural activity of a few thousand rat neurons placed in a special petri dish that keeps the cells alive. The dish, a Multi-Electrode Array (MEA), is instrumented with 60 two-way electrodes for communication between the neurons and external electronics. The neural signals are recorded and sent to a computer that translates neural activity into robotic movement." The team hopes "to establish a cultured in vitro network system that learns like the living brains in people and animals do." Thi
s summary contains images of the robotic arm and of a picture drawn by the 'semi-living artist.' It also contains other references to similar works.
