Reflections on the brain and the liminal bodies
Coauthors: Mónica Bello, Andy Gracie
For the majority of the enlightened era of human history we have had no idea exactly what the brain is, nor what it is made from, nor how it works. Ancient physicians believed that the brain was made of a kind of phlegm. Aristotle's characteristic binary view was that it worked to counteract and cool off the fiery heart, much like a refrigerator. Hippocratic authors began to identify the brain as the messenger of understanding and proposed the notions that it could be the site, or source, of joys, sorrows, and griefs. Until renaissance times these ideas endured along with declarations that our perceptions, emotions, reasoning, and actions were the result of mysterious vapours that swirled through cavities in our head and traveled through our bodies.
Things began to change with the dawning of the scientific revolution of the 17th century. This was the golden era of dissections, and dog, sheep and human brains were explored to provide the first accurate maps of the organ. It was recognised that this custard-like tissue was where our mental world existed. Perhaps some of the most important developments, those that lay the foundations for future science were discoveries made by Thomas Willis and his fellow Oxfordians. They rejected Descartes’s fascination with the pineal gland and his speculative view of the mind as an “unextended substance”, preferring to focus on a description of the nervous system in its own right.
Another hundred years later, partly through Galvini's demonstrations, came the understanding that the brain was an electrical organ. Voltages replaced vapours. The point of view of the Italian physician Camillo Golgi was that the voltages traveled via a web of continuous connections. The Spaniard Ramon y Cajal recognised that it was actually contiguous, that each neuron is a distinct cell, separate from every other one. His hypothesis that the functional unit of the brain is the neuron led to the formation of the neuron doctrine and created the field of neuroscience. We now understand that all neurons are electrically excitable and that differing concentrations of ions maintain voltage gradients across cellular membranes. We have also discovered that these processes are accessible and malleable.
In the current computer dominated world we can see the inevitable comparisons and collisions between notions of the brain as a technological device, as a computer, as an allegory of the internet. While there is some consensus that the brain computes there is less agreement about what kind of computational system it might be. What is clear is that the nervous system has inputs and outputs, it takes in sensory data and outputs muscle movements. It has feedback control in that it controls an organism's behaviour in response to its environment. Most obviously it processes information. Observations of these processes focus on 'spike trains', by which the voltages across neurons as they send signals are measured. However, the brain is analogue, a continuous real time apparatus and does not function in the discrete time insensitive steps of digital computing systems. Some say that these discrepancies rule out the possibilities for strong artificial intelligences.
The brain, in simple terms, evolved as and exists as a device with which to control the behaviours of the organic body it sits within. Its principle modus operandi is pattern recognition, taking stimuli from the sense organs, processing it according to a library of learned situations, and generating an appropriate response. The library is learned and continues to learn, the brain being highly plastic in the sense, almost endlessly capable of rearranging or increasing its network of neurons, axons and synapsis. Its electrical signal web is always responsive to new inputs and new demands. While Behaviourism suggested the mind was a kind of "black-box" with inputs (stimuli) producing outputs (responses) through internal processes that might or might not exist, Cognitive psychology argues that the brain is a computer-like information processor made from discrete, modular components that operate in isolation. These nodes consist of a continuum of neurons and associated cellular machinery which to todays advanced neuroscience is highly accessible. Enough is now understood to apply a generally reductionist treatment and methodology in order to tease out some of the esoteric mysteries of brain properties and function.
The vast knowledge that now exists about the structure and functioning of the brain has been of great value to fields of techno-scientific study that aim to replicate certain aspects of the biological organism. (It may seem superfluous to refer to a biological organism, but the non-biological organism is perhaps no longer an oxymoron). Robotics, artificial life and intelligence, cybernetics, ubiquitous computing, the internet of things all in their way draw on the study of the brain for their own advancement. But obviously such rich ontological terrain, abounding with metaphorical possibilities, is bound to excite the attentions of artists and philosophers as well.
Guy Ben Ary has been making work at the forefront of this compelling field - combining art, biotechnology and engineering - since the late 1990s. His subversive and critical engagement with the science and technology of life and death, cybernetics and the transformation of the body has frequently taken the brain, or the notion of brain, as its protagonist. The techno-organic scenarios he creates, usually with scientific collaborators, aim to draw viewers into a practical and ethical dialogue about the future of such technologies and their potential applications, and encourage them to re-evaluate their own perceptions and beliefs. In the works of Ben Ary and his collaborators we don't only witness references to the discourses surrounding science and art, brain and body, but we actually see each field embodied within the work. In many of these pieces the brain exists as a biotechnological entity created by engineers in a lab, while the robotic aspect exists remotely as an artistic agent. The brain is scientific, the body is artistic. We must consider the veracity and implications of such dichotomies. The fact that such terminologies and dichotomies are problematic becomes central to the disconcerting and provocative purpose of the work. As, according the many contemporary thinkers such as Donna Haraway and artists such as Stelarc, the body is becoming (will become) obsolete then the work of Ben Ary viscerally represents the fears and hopes of humanity through notions of disembodied consciousness and intelligence.
There is a classic thought experiment known as 'Brain in a Vat' in which an ex vivo brain is wired up to electrodes that create stimuli that mimic real sensations. The brain in question has no way of knowing that it is not residing inside the cranium of a living organism and having first hand experience, but it acts in exactly the same way as if it was. In the same way, organic matter in vitro will only grow because, via the use of culture media and carefully modulated environmental conditions, a hyperreal parallel of the 'real' has been created. This is an expression of semiotics and the application of biosemiotics developed by Jakob von Uexkull and Tomas Sebeok. Literally this is 'the virtual' as described by Deleuze, or in De Landa's terms 'transcendental empiricism' – perception of information from direct sensory experience.
In the artist’s work 'MEART, the Semi-Living Artist' this notion is explored via the trademark use of remotely networked organic brain and robot body. Produced in the year 2000 in collaboration with Phil Gamblen the piece provided one of the early robotic embodiments of a bio-engineered neural network and explored the possibilities of creating a brain-machine hybrid or a cyborg. In practice the installation of the work exists in two locations; a brain of disassociated rat neurons grown on an MEA (microelectrode array) dish in the laboratory of Dr Steve Potter, and a geographically detached robot body. This robotic entity, suggestive of bone and muscle fibres is pneumatically operated and holds pens with which to draw on paper. The brain and body communicate in real time over the internet, producing portraits of people stopping to observe the work. The body uses its built in camera to send images which electrically excite the neurons of the brain, their impulses in turn drive the movements of the robot arms. What is significant about this experiment is that it bypasses the normally utilitarian purpose of such couplings. Here the only purpose of the apparatus is to be creative, an emergent property which, all too sadly, is mostly seen as strictly non-utilitarian. This in itself is a direct treatment of the notion of intelligence.
As the artist Paul Vanouse observes; MEART is “a collage of contradictions that are designed to create cognitive dissonance in its viewers, and it forces them to re-evaluate their own perceptions and beliefs. Its authoritative complexity simultaneously convinces us of its technological re-engineering of cognitive processes, while also calling attention to just how far it has strayed from generally held conceptions of life, intelligence or creativity.”
The project that followed on from MEART, 'Silent Barrage', dealt with and expanded on similar themes and questions. It had been noted during the collaborations and processes of making MEART that the nature of the collaboration between art and science reflected the duality between brain and body, organic and technological. In reality there was more of a continuum of mutual exchange than a simple give and take relationship. Cultural and scientific experiments were being conducted in parallel and the findings of each underpinned the holistic development of the work. This relationship and exchange can be seen a true collaboration, each party exploring and sharing possibilities. Some of the scientific findings of the behaviour and responses of the neuron culture over time became the subject of further questions from the artistic perspective. Furthermore for this project the artists even moved into the lab and became a part of the scientific environment.
Silent Barrage is also a robotic, machinic device operated by a remote bio-engineered brain. However, access to the ongoing workings in the lab and the ability to witness the neuron experiments over time lent a subtle but important influence to the development of the work. The understanding of the functioning of the brain and the scientists relationships with their cultures and personal MEA dishes gave focus the the ideas. What became especially apparent, originating in observations of MEART's brain, was that these cultured neural networks could become dysfunctional, and that periodic lack of stimulation could lead to what was effectively an epileptic fit. The members of the Potter lab discovered that specialised stimulations of the neurons could calm these outbursts, enhance plasticity and increase learning potential. The immersive nature of Silent Barrage was designed specifically to address these issues.
The thirty-two 2.4 metre high white columns of the installation with the humming, buzzing and clicking of the robotic devices attached to each one of them forms a breathtaking spectacle. Despite being somewhat foreboding we are drawn into the arena and thus become a part of the work, our presence and movement within the space directly stimulating the neurons to express their responses as marks on the columns. The learning phase of the neurons coupled with the audience reaction to the space plus the MEA brain's responses to their presence and movements all fold into a feedback loop that characterises the work. As the artists state “Using the presumption of free will of the audience, who chart their own path trough the space, this work draws real and imaginary parallels between the person and nerve cell. (They) in a symbolic and poetic way, are helping cure the dysfunctional brain from its epileptic properties by walking through the space and being among the poles. The viewers help to ‘silent’ the ‘barrage’.”
In these works we can see amidst the myriad narratives and connotations a fascination with transformation. The capacity for science, technology and art to take materials and concepts and remould and reconfigure them for new purposes, new relations and new meanings. There is a communication of the deep understanding that modern biotechnology sees organic matter as a raw but highly plastic material that can be manipulated into serving new purposes. The building blocks of life can be taken apart and put together again to make a different model.
What we must now consider as historical biology has assumed a uni-directional development of the cell in multicellular animals. First comes the stem cell, either embryonic or from the blood or bone marrow of adults. These stem cells then differentiate into specific organs, blood, skin, neuron, bone and whatever else the body needs to make itself. Once differentiated, it was claimed, the cell is fixed. But then came along some ground breaking work by Professor Shinya Yamanaka for which he was awarded the Nobel prize along with Sir John Gurdon which completely changed the way we see the cell as a functional entity. This new technology was Induced Pluripotent Stem Cells (iPSc) and simply (but incredibly) speaking points out that mature, differentiated cells can be coaxed back into their embryonic state. For all intents and purposes they once again become stem cells. While on the one hand offering a solution to the ethical dilemmas associated with embryonic stem cell harvesting, iPSc also raises concerns regarding the ethically loaded potential for iPSc technology to be used in the derivation of gametes; human reproductive cells, ie. sperm and oocytes.
The tensions and possibilities wrapped up within this new technology piqued the interest of Ben Ary and formed the basis of a new project. He had already been interested in the ethical and practical issues of the use of human brain cells for his work instead of those of rats and mice that had previously been employed. The insurmountable problem being that the removal of brain material from a living organism is generally fatal. So what then if it was possible to take other human cells and reconfigure them as neurons, to build a human brain? And to add to the absurdity of the situation what if the origin of those cells is the foreskin? It should not be too much of a surprise that the foreskin is one of the most abundant sources of human cells and are easily purchased online.
We should note here a certain dark humour and sense of the ridiculous, the absurd, that exists in Ben Ary's work. While this project became officially titled 'In Potentia' it's working title was 'Project Dickhead'. Similarly before being named MEART that project (owing to early experiments with fish neurons) had the appallingly wonderful working title 'Fish and Chips'.
The phallic references of the work were embodied within the form of the slightly steampunk incubator that houses the living brain. The neural activity generates an unsettling soundscape. In the light of MEART and Silent Barrage, a relatively simple piece, but one with complex and far reaching ethical and philosophical concerns. There is a certain fetishisation of consciousness in Western culture, of itself and as a symbol of life, of the intellectual quality of being alive. We see human brain cells carrying out a creative and sophisticated human activity, the making of music. However, we realise that this brain exists in a state of not living yet not dead. And we realise that this consciousness has been engineered. Then we realise that this consciousness does not even come from that most noble of organic substances, the human brain, but from that which is unspeakable and so readily discarded; almost a joke material in fact. This is highly unsettling, to come to terms with the fact that this most human of qualities is just another attribute that can be generated from seemingly any organic matter. Ben Ary asks “as it is now possible to bio-engineer a neural network or biological brain, what potential do we now have to bio-engineer conscious, sentient beings and where exactly would these liminal lives fit within our problematic anthropocentric species hierarchy?”
Ben Ary's trajectory of interests and artistic/scientific experiments and explorations have seemingly inevitably led to the recent project 'cellF'. What appeared more as a techno obsession with disembodied rat brains and robotic bodies in earlier works has revealed itself to be a deeper fascination with what the brain actually is, both materially and functionally. How can these miniscule and highly impersonal voltage generators perform creative tasks reminiscent of imagination, creativity and consciousness? More specifically, what drives these mysterious actions in the human brain, and even more specifically, what about his own?
Again the artist created a brain from his own mature cells. This time cells from a biopsy of fibroblasts from the arm were reprogrammed using iPSc in the laboratory of Dr Michael Edel in Barcelona. The cells were reverted to generic stem cells before being redirected to being neural stem cells. Then once again in SymbioticA with the assistance of Dr Stuart Hodgetts they were fully differentiated as neurons in an MEA dish. But what about a body? What is the appropriate way to embody one's one disembodied brain? Ben Ary decided to go back to the dream he shared with many a young teenager, to be a rock star. The cybernetic entity known as 'cellF' featuring a proxy of the artist's brain would be a musician. Not so much self-portrait as fulfilling fantasy. Is this what biotechnology offers us?
The aesthetics and functioning of an analogue synthesiser have many parallels with a neural network growing and operating in an MEA dish. In both it is the careful management and propagation of signals and voltages that produces the 'meaningful' operations of the system. Aesthetically speaking the multitude of wires, patch cables and dials of the classical analogue synthesiser is reminiscent of the much smaller layout of the hardware of the MEA and its support apparatus. As the artist points out, neural networks produce large and extremely complex data sets, and by its very nature, the analogue synthesiser is well suited to reflecting the complexity and quantity of information via sound. The work is a performative cybernetic musician, capable of listening to and improvising on the musical (or other) input of other non-disembodied humans.
These four works, as is common in the practice of artists deeply engaged in scientific research and process, merely represent snapshots in a hugely sophisticated ongoing process of research and development. Superficially we could see evidence of a techno-fetishism; disembodied brains, esoteric and cutting edge laboratory protocols and robotic devices doing their thing. However, the work of Ben Ary and his various collaborators represents something much more significant. The work is highly subversive in light of the euphoric promise that we are offered by the public dissemination of redeeming biotechnologies. Instead the projects seek to problematise the very emerging innovations that they take advantage of, foregrounding the ethical complexities of living matter as material. By highlighting the reprogrammability of the cell, the building block of brain and body, of who we are, we are forced to reconsider our own sense of self and the qualities of the stuff we are made of. We are concurrently and uncomfortably reminded that our own biological substance is increasingly another material with which to quantify and commercialise our existence and our humanity.
By arguing these points through cultural means, though evidently underpinned by very hard science, we are not allowed to forgot that it is these expressions that make us special. That no reworking of cellular matter or reconstruction of brains can adequately resolve the question of where are consciousness, creativity and life force come from. Instead we need to confront the multiple new questions pertaining to our understanding of life, the human body, sentience, and personhood. Ben Ary's highly personal but rigorously scientific art works allow, even demand, that we do just that.