BIOBOT 1.1 / 1.2
Zoran Srdić Janežič: Biobot 1.0 and 1.2
‘Biobot’ incorporates soft tissue engineering by developing a robot with functioning biological muscle and neural cells. While inventing and developing a line of scientific, artistic and DIY methods Biobot 1.0 is an update, which strives to use an electric signal from live neural tissue to manipulate the mechatronic art installation.
On the frontiers of art that uses tissue engineering to create new life forms, these new creatures raise ontological and ethical questions about their status, about the new protocols of handling them, and question our attitude towards them. The line between a machine and live being is once again completely blurred.
In a body of the Biobot we can find live neurons, growing on a plate with electrodes. After stimulating neurons, they conduct electrical signal on Multiarray electrodes, which we convert from analogue to digital, amplify and use it for the manipulation of Biobot’s movement. At the same time, we are trying to engineer the live muscle in a lab as a part of the kinesthetic mechanism.
Information technologies together with biotechnologies are nowdays connecting humanity with all living environment. I see this connection in creating live biohybrid forms. Connecting living tissue with a mechanism is also a contemplation of beauty and complexity of already existing movements. Those characteristics of the Biobot are enabled by technological and scientific development as a living module on a small scale, with its own intelligence and own rights to exist as a life form.
Concept and development: Zoran Srdić Janežič | Curatorial guidance: Jurij Krpan | Programming and electronics: Matic Potočnik | Producer: Jana Putrle Srdić | Text: Jana Putrle Srdić | Biosensing electronics: Erik KrkačElectronics | PCB design: Gregor Krpič | Neural engineering: BioTehna Lab / Kristijan Tkalec | Muscle engineering: Educell Lab / Ariana Barlič | Production: Institute for Arts Gulag | Coproducers: Kapelica Gallery, BioTehna Lab / Kersnikova Institute, Ljubljana Puppet Theatre | Support: Department of Culture of the Municipality of Ljubljana
Exhibition of Biobot 1.1 was in exhibition space Modul as a part of Festival Earth without Humans III., June 2019 / Biobot 1.2 is on permanent exhibition in Zavod Kersnikova, December 2019
