SEMINAR: Towards the cyborg; integration of robotics and the nervous system in engineering and the arts.

The Seminar: Since Galvani “galvanised” his frogs in the eighteenth century there have been attempts to link living tissue with electronics. However it has been the rapid reduction in size accompanied by increases in sophistication of electronics in the twenty first century that has opened up extraordinary possibilities for linking circuitry (hardware) with biological tissue (wetware). In this seminar I will describe the various attempts to integrate microcircuits with living cells, tissues and organisms, including humans. I want to draw attention to the different motivations of those working in basic, applied and artistic research and how each has exploited the advances in technology to produce startling and futuristic objects linking the living and inanimate. I will discuss the practical and ethical dilemmas such hybrids engender and what may be possible in the all too near future.

The Speaker: Stuart Bunt is Professorial Fellow in Teaching and Learning in the School of Anatomy and Human Biology. A zoologist/neurobiologist by training, Stuart has been involved with computer aided learning and new media art since the early eighties. In 2000 he teamed up with Miranda Grounds and Oron Catts to found SymbioticA, a research laboratory for artistic research, predominantly in the life sciences. One of the first collaborative projects of the SymbioticA Research Group, based on Stuart’s research, was a drawing robot powered by a fish brain. Stuart was scientific director of SymbioticA from its inception to 2007 when SymbioticA won the inaugural Golden Nica for hybrid arts at Ars ElectronicA. SymbioticA, with Oron Catts as director, is now a State Centre of Excellence and continues to attract residents from around the world.