Science, art and epilepsy

An art and science project that emulates the uncontrolled activity of nerve tissue in epilepsy has won a prestigious international art competition.

Silent Barrage, researched and developed at SymbioticA, the art and science collaborative research laboratory at The University of Western Australia, was awarded first place and 18,000 Euros in the VIDA 12.0 competition, which recognises excellence in artistic creativity using new technologies and artificial life. The awards were announced last week in Spain.

Silent Barrage is a collaboration between art researchers Phil Gamblen and Guy Ben-Ary and engineer Peter Gee from SymbioticA and scientists from Steve Potter’s Laboratory for Neuroengineering at Georgia Institute of Technology in Atlanta in the United States.

The installation comprises 32 robotic poles, each responding via the internet to the electrical activity that occurs in the ‘brain’ - a neural network grown in a petri dish in a lab thousands of kilometres away. The audience interacts with the network by moving between the noisy pole-shaped robots, helping to silence the barrage of electrical impulses.

The work focuses on bursts of uncontrolled activity of nerve tissue, a typical characteristic of epilepsy. The scientists hope it might help them understand better how to quieten the activity in the culture dish and this, in turn, would assist in treating epilepsy.