cellF: Surrogate musicianship as a manifestation of in-vitro intelligence

McKenzie, V.; Thompson, N.; Moore, D.; & Ben-Ary, G. (2021). cellF: Surrogate musicianship as a manifestation of in-vitro intelligence. In E. Reck Miranda (ed.), Handbook of Artificial Intelligence for Music: Foundations, Advanced Approaches, and Developments for Creativity (pp. 915-929). Springer.

cellF is a collaborative project at the cutting edge of experimental art and music that brings together artists, musicians, designers and scientists to create the world’s first biological neuron-driven analogue modular synthesizer. It combines biological material with electronic circuitry, grown in the laboratory and outside of the body, in-vitro. Such entities are directly linked to the human donors of their biological material, yet physically removed from any human body. At the same time, these are living entities with a degree of autonomy that grow and change with an innate vitality in response to an environment. Thus, in its autonomy and plasticity, cellF represents a new kind of entity that can be described as possessing ‘in-vitro intelligence’.