Meet the latest spaced out modern artist - a picture-drawing robot arm in Australia whose brain sits in a petri dish in the US.

 

Working from their university labs in two different corners of the world, American and Australian researchers have created what they call a new class of creative beings: "the semi-living artist".

 

Gripping three coloured markers positioned above a white canvas, a robotic arm churns out drawings akin to that of a three-year-old. Its guidance comes from around 50,000 rat neurons in a petri dish 19,000 kilometres away.

Source: Beeb

 

I thought this might be of interest as I know some people were recently discussing the use of organic materials for processing in computers (sorry - can't find the thread now).

That looks pretty good. Hopefully they can build on the research and get a few more million neurons into it