MEART – The Semi Living Artist “is a geographically detached, bio-cybernetic project exploring aspects of creativity and artistry in the age of biological technologies and the future possibilities of creating semi living entities. It investigates our abilities and intentions in dealing with the emergence of a new class of beings (whose production may lie far in the future) that may be sentient, creative and unpredictable. Meart takes the basic components of the brain (isolated neurons) attaches them to a mechanical body through the mediation of a digital processing engine to attempt and create an entity that will seemingly evolve, learn and become conditioned to express its growth experiences through ‘art activity’. The combined elements of unpredictability and ‘temperament’ with the ability to learn and adapt, creates an artistic entity that is both dependent, and independent, from its creator and its creator’s intentions.

MEART is assembled from:

‘Wetware’ – cultured neurons from embryonic rat cortex grown over the Multi Electrode Array

‘Hardware’ – the robotic (drawing) arm

‘Software’ – that interfaces between the wetware and the hardware”