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MEART- The Semi Living Artist
Steve Potter & Symbiotica- MEART- The Semi Living Artist 
Click to see official site
MEART is a project developed by SymbioticA Research Group in collaboration with Steve Potter Labs. The project is intended to bridge the gap between biological science and computers, creating an artificial/biological artist with creative capacity. In doing so, they have created a robot that is controlled by the brain cells of a rat. The living cultured nerve cells of the embryonic rat cortex are in Steve Potter’s lab at the Georgia Institute of Technology in Atlanta. The robot’s “body” is a drawing arm, which is in the SymbioticA Research Lab at the University of Western Australia. The “brain” and the “body” communicate in real-time via the Internet. MEART is assembled from wetware, hardware, and software, with communication capabilities from the Internet. The term “wetware” is used to describe the neurons from the embryonic rat cortex grown over a multi electrode ray. The hardware is the physical robotic drawing arm, and the software is the interfaces between the wetware and the hardware.
MEART is an attempt to create a creative and unpredictable thinking entity. It is semi-living because it is made from both living and nonliving material; part grown and part constructed. MEART has a camera that acts as its eyes and allows it to see the outside world. What is seen through the camera is processed by the neurons that act as its brain. MEART then reacts accordingly through the robotic arm, or body, with which it draws. Finally, the Internet functions as its nervous system, allowing communication between the brain and the body, which can be at any place in the world. There is hope that eventually MEART will evolve and learn while expressing its growth through art.
The physical characteristics of MEART’s “body” include a somewhat long metal arm that is bent in the middle like an elbow. The point where it is bent is the highest point on the robot. It does not look like a human arm by any means. The arm is bent again at the “wrist” and a flat piece is extended to hold the drawing utensils, like a hand. There are two “arms” that connect at the “hand.” The drawings that MEART produces look like colorful diamond-shaped scribbles made up of straight lines. Each drawing is usually of one color pattern with darker spots in some areas.
