September 5, 2003

But Is It Art?

By WILL POTTER

Watch out, fans of Pollock and de Kooning. There's a new abstract expressionist on the scene, sure to challenge concepts of art: 50,000 rat neurons sitting in a petri dish.

The neurons, located in a laboratory at the Georgia Institute of Technology, communicate via electrodes and the Internet with a robotic arm at the University of Western Australia. Researchers, who say they have created a "semi-living artist," send the neurons information, such as low-resolution photographs. The