Artist Brittany Ransom has built a tiny cockroach backpack which lets her remote control a cockroach with Twitter. For science art! CNET has a video of the insectoid cyborg:
Ransom let visitors to the Chicago Artists’ Coalition’s exhibition Life, in some form control the roach by tweeting the hashtags #turnroachleft and #turnroachright at its twitter account, @tweetroach. Every thirty seconds, the winning hashtag was sent as a command to the insect through the RoboRoach control circuit.
Ransom passed on her artist’s statement to CNET:
At what point does its intelligence and ability take over? How much does it take before we are all desensitized to overstimulation? As we, as human beings, grow more cyborgian and interconnected through social media, this project helps us participate in discovering the answer.
While Ransom’s point is compelling, the real wizardry lies in the RoboRoach gear itself. Created and sold by neuroscience hackers Backyard Brains, the kit lets anyone build cyborg cockroaches at home (some assembly required).
After some minor roach surgery, it sends small electric currents to the roaches antennae, making it think it’s running into a wall. Zap the left antennae, and it’ll turn right, and vice-versa.
Backyard Brains describe the experiments you can do with the kit:
You can use this experimental model to teach your students about current neurotechnology. For example, 1) How long before the cockroach adapts to the stimulation and learns to ignore it?, and 2) What is the optimal circuit design to make the electronics as simple and light as possible?
It’s like a 21st century spin to the idea that cockroaches will survive nuclear war: TwitterRoach will probably learn to adapt to and ignore twitter long before we do. The ultimate survivor indeed.
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