Abstract
Guy Ben-Ary is an artist and researcher at SymbioticA: the Centre for Excellence in Biological Arts, at the University of Western Australia since 2001. The biological laboratory is his studio, and tissue engineering, electrophysiology, and other biological techniques are his artistic mediums. His work explores a number of fundamental themes that underpin the intersection between art and science; namely life and death, cybernetics, and artificial life. This paper examines the methodologies and theories that underpin his artistic practice by using four major projects as examples: MEART, Silent Barrage, In-Potentia, and cellF, with discussion of terminology, ethics and the idea of robotic embodiment as an artistic strategy.
Keywords
These keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.
The cyborg is a kind of disassembled and reassembled, postmodern collective and personal self.
Donna Haraway [1]
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Notes
- 1.
Throughout this paper, the word “I” denotes Guy Ben-Ary. However, this paper is a result of a collaborative writing effort between Guy Ben-Ary and Gemma Ben-Ary.
- 2.
The ‘Tissue Culture and Art Project’ are Oron Catts and Ionat Zurr, and during the years of 1999–2003 I collaborated with them (http://www.tca.uwa.edu.au).
- 3.
- 4.
Dr. Bunt has a lab in the school of Anatomy & Human Biology, UWA and was back then the scientific Director of SymbioticA.
- 5.
The collective who developed Fish and Chips and MEART was known as the SymbioticA Research Group.
- 6.
Dr. Steve Potter is an Associate Professor in the Laboratory for neuro-engineering at Georgia Tech, Atlanta, USA. Potter and his then-Ph.D. student, Douglas Bakkum, were our scientific collaborators and played a major part in the development of MEART.
- 7.
When Douglas Bakkum graduated and left the Potter Lab, Riley Zeller-Townson took his place in the Silent Barrage team. Peter Gee, an engineer, also joined the team. Both were instrumental in the development of Silent Barrage. Dr. Nathan Scott, an engineer, and Brett Murray, a programmer, also assisted in the production of the work.
- 8.
Head of the Laboratory for Pluripotency, University of Barcelona.
- 9.
Director of the Spinal Cord Repair Lab, University of Western Australia.
- 10.
Dr. Bakkum is currently a group leader at the Department of Biosystems Science and Engineering, the ETH Zurich.
- 11.
Electrical engineer from Perth, aka nonlinear circuits.
- 12.
Experimental musician and lecturer at Lasalle College of the Arts in Singapore.
References
Haraway D (1991) A cyborg manifesto: science, technology, and socialist-feminism in the late twentieth century. In: Simians, cyborgs and women: the reinvention of nature, pp 82–149
Zurr I, Catts O (2003) The ethical claims of bio-art: killing the other or self-cannibalism? Aust N Z J Art 5(1):167–188
Stelarc (2013) Fractal flesh/liminal desire: The cadaver, the comatose and the chimera. Evolution haute couture, art and science in the post-biological age. In: Bulatov D (ed) National Centre for Contemporary Arts (NCCA) Baltic Branch, Kaliningrad, p 271
Hughes R (2007) The semi-living author: post-human creative agency. In: Anstey T, Grillner K, Hughes R (eds) Architecture and authorship. Black Dog Publishing, London
Rossa B (2004) Art digital 2004, I click therefore I am. M’ARS Association, M’ARS Centre for Contemporary Arts, Moscow, p 23
Venouse P (2006) Contemplating MEART, strange attractions, charm between art and science. In: Ivanova A (ed)
McCrea E (2006) A report on the practices of SymbioticA Research Group in the creation of MEART, the semi-living entity
Potter S (2013) Better minds, cognitive enhancement in the 21st century. Evolution haute couture, art and science in the post-biological age. In: Bulatov D (ed) National Centre for Contemporary Arts (NCCA) Baltic Branch, Kaliningrad
Madhavan R, Chao ZC, Wagenaar DA, Bakkum DJ, Potter SM (2006) Multi-site stimulation quiets network-wide spontaneous bursts and enhances functional plasticity in cultured cortical networks. In: Paper presented at the 28th annual international conference of the IEEE engineering in medicine and biology society, New York
Hudson K, Ben-Ary G. In-Potentia. http://in-potentia.com.au/about
Hudson K, Ben-Ary G. In-Potentia. https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/9468392/ARS_concept_notes_final.pdf
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2016 Springer Science+Business Media Singapore
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Ben-Ary, G., Ben-Ary, G. (2016). Bio-engineered Brains and Robotic Bodies: From Embodiment to Self-portraiture. In: Herath, D., Kroos, C., Stelarc (eds) Robots and Art. Cognitive Science and Technology. Springer, Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-10-0321-9_15
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-10-0321-9_15
Published:
Publisher Name: Springer, Singapore
Print ISBN: 978-981-10-0319-6
Online ISBN: 978-981-10-0321-9
eBook Packages: EngineeringEngineering (R0)