It sounds like something from a Black Mirror episode: the cells of a late composer “playing” music in a gallery, pig bone sculpted into the shape of wings and jackets grown from living tissue.
But these aren’t scenes drawn from science fiction – they were created in Perth.
One of the world’s most isolated cities has become an unlikely hub for some of the most confronting experiments in arts and science, asking uncomfortable questions about the ethics of manipulating life.
A micro replica of Perth artist Stelarc’s ear was created in collaboration with Oron Catts and Ionat Zurr.
At the heart of the debate is a place science has never gone before – the possibility of creating sentience outside the human body.
And there’s no roadmap. No global laws, no national regulations, and not even an agreed definition of what “sentience” means in this context.
“We are in uncharted territory. These are not conversations that can be left just to scientists or corporations,” said SymbioticA cofounder Oron Catts.
A miniature jacket made from the stem cells of mice.Credit: Ionat Zurr and Oron Catts
When artworks need to be ‘killed’
Perth’s SymbioticA lab has long worked at this edge of possibility.
Founded 25 years ago, it became a world-first artistic laboratory embedded inside the University of Western Australia’s School of Anatomy and Human Biology.
A place where artists, scientists and the public could confront ideas usually hidden behind lab doors.
Dr Stuart Hodgetts, a neuroscientist at UWA, has been there from the beginning as one of SymbioticA’s scientific advisors.
“My role was to be a sounding board and to advise on what we could do to help. They’d come to me with ideas that were provocative, often outrageous,” he said.
Its projects have been as strange as they are groundbreaking: they were the first team in the world to grow and eat lab meat in 2003.
In the same year, they grew a small-scale ear using human and animal cells.
In 2008, a miniature jacket made from living mouse cells exhibited at New York’s Museum of Modern Art had to be “killed”, as it was growing too fast and started to deform.
Museum curator Paola Antonelli told the media at the time she felt “cruel” when she had to turn it off.
SymbioticA’s Ionat Zurr and Oron Catts.Credit: Daniel James
Each one forces audiences to consider not just what is possible, but what is acceptable.
“From the very beginning, the idea was to bring artists into the lab, to give them access to the actual living matter – not just representations of it – and to see what questions emerge,” Catts said.
“Our work was exhibited in MoMA, in the Pompidou in Paris, the National Art Museum of China in Beijing, and many other very prestigious venues around the world.
“And it’s all coming out of Perth. We never left Perth. This project is truly a Perth project.”
“We kind of, weirdly, unscientifically, formed a relationship with Dish Eight.”
Matt Gingold
The emotional bond between scientists and cells
One of the newest works to spark debate is Revivification at the Art Gallery of Western Australia, where visitors are confronted by the sight and sound of Alvin Lucier’s living cells.
Before his death in 2021, the late American composer donated blood, which was used to create pluripotent stem cells: a type of cell that can develop into many different types of cells or tissues in the body. These were then transformed into cerebral organoids: clusters of neurons resembling an early-stage brain.
Artists Guy Ben-Ary, Matthew Gingold, Nathan Thompson and Dr Stuart Hodgetts with Alvin Lucier’s ‘mini-brain’. Credit: Rift Photography
Gold probes pick up the neurons’ electrical activity, relaying the impulses to actuators – devices that convert energy into physical motion. They strike the brass plates and fill the gallery with sound.
Perth artists and researchers Guy Ben-Ary, Nathan Thompson, Matt Gingold and Dr Stuart Hodgetts–- who have all been residents or played a part in SymbioticA – each played a role in making this project come to life.
In 2015, the trio premiered a similar project called CellF – the world’s first neural synthesiser – where Ben-Ary’s cells “performed” a live music set with a musician.
The artworks spark the conversation – if these cells can respond to their environment, are they “thinking” or “learning”?
Late composer Alvin Lucier’s external ‘brain’ is creating a new work in real time in the state art gallery. Credit: Rebecca Mansell 2025
“We’re nowhere near this, by any stretch of the imagination, but one day it could, potentially become a sentient system,” Hodgetts said.
“It’s potentially confronting for people to think about, but it’s important to stimulate that discussion and the idea of agency beyond death.”
Gingold, who engineered the installation, said ethics were considered from the outset.
“Alvin himself knew exactly what it was that we were going to do, what it would look like, what it would sound like. So it was a real collaboration,” Gingold said.
“I don’t know what it means to a human for a human to be born out of a machine.”
Ionat Zurr
For the cells to stay “alive”, their dish had to be kept at 37 degrees, receive nutrients and have a waste removal system.
Though far from conscious, Gingold admitted he grew attached to one cluster of cells, “Dish Eight,” which produced the richest patterns of activity.
“We kind of, weirdly, unscientifically, formed a relationship with Dish Eight,” he said.
“We would even find ourselves saying ‘How’s Alvin today?’ It was hard not to project onto it, even though we knew rationally it wasn’t a person.”
A brain organoid through the microscope, created with stem cells.Credit: Cortical Labs
When the cells eventually died, Gingold was caught off guard by his own reaction.
“I was surprisingly much more emotional than I thought I would be. You spend weeks listening to it, watching its signals, and suddenly, it’s gone. It felt like losing a collaborator.”
That bond is precisely what these projects often expose – the ways human empathy races ahead of scientific definitions.
Freedom or control? The ethics of pregnancy outside the body
SymbioticA co-founder Ionat Zurr is now exploring one of the most sensitive frontiers of all: artificial placentas.
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In October, US Penn State University Arts professor Christine Millett will visit Perth to host a workshop with Zurr with a focus on ectogenesis – the growth of an embryo outside the body in an artificial womb.
While science could one day save extremely premature babies, Zurr said it opened a Pandora’s box of questions.
Could it free women from the burdens of pregnancy – or create new powers to control reproduction?
Zurr said it could be a slippery slope from saving lives to deciding which womb, or mother, is “good enough” to house a baby.
“I don’t know what it means to a human to be born out of a machine. It’s a new frontier, and we have to tread carefully,” Zurr said.
But Perth perinatology researcher professor Matt Kemp, who works on extreme preterm survival, said the science was far less advanced than many assumed.
“We are more likely to be on Mars before we see a baby born from an artificial placenta. But I could very well be wrong,” Kemp said.
Cortical Labs co-founder Hon Weng Chong and chief scientific officer Brett Kagan.
Should we regulate or wait?
The ripples of questioning are global.
Last month, Catts organised the international Politics of the Machine conference in Perth, drawing dozens of speakers from around the world.
One keynote was neuroscientist Brett Kagan, who visited the Revivification neurons while in town. For him, it was an echo of his own research.
Kagan is chief scientific officer of Melbourne start-up Cortical Labs, the team behind the world’s first “bio computer”.
“We don’t understand enough to be making a call as scientists, let alone politicians or policy makers.”
Brett Kagan
Just last week the first computers were sent out to market, costing $50,000 each.
“We didn’t expect so much commercial interest. So when we opened up our order books, within the first month or six weeks, we had over 600 inquiries to buy devices,” he said.
In 2022, Kagan and his colleagues said they were able to teach neurons to play the game Pong – which led to the team raising about $10 million.
He said electrical signals “communicated” with the neurons grown directly on silicon, creating an “intelligence that learns”.
Those neurons might eventually be used to treat disease or lead the way in the race to general intelligence.
Kagan said to regulate now would be bad for the progress being made in the field, and the positives that could come from it, like treating disease.
“There’s no evidence that anything we’re doing is creating any suffering or harm whatsoever,” he said.
“We don’t understand enough to be making a call as scientists, let alone politicians or policymakers, to be able to effectively regulate this. Anything you put in now would be redundant by the time it becomes a law.”
Kagan said his business was well-equipped to gatekeep who could use his device, and would only sell it to people who could safely use the equipment.
Why isn’t Australia talking about this?
Whatever the answer, Australia should be discussing the topic more.
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“That’s what our work has always been about. Not to say, ‘This is unethical,’ but to say, ‘This is happening – are we talking about it?’” Catts said.
Despite its global influence, SymbioticA has often struggled for recognition at home. But Perth’s isolation may have been part of the movement’s strength.
“Australia doesn’t really see art as important, which is frustrating, but it also gave us freedom,” Catts said.
“Meanwhile, our work has been cited in European Commission policy papers and in the US Congress. Just not in Australia.”
Europe has already begun debating whether cerebral organoids could one day be considered a form of legal person or could ever be capable of developing consciousness or experience pain.
A spokesperson for the National Health and Medical Research Council, which sets the ethical standards for medical research in Australia, said there were no guidelines in this space.
“This is a broad emerging area of research,” they said.
“NHMRC is not aware of existing Australian ethics guidelines directly focused on synthetic biology or synthetic biological intelligences or neuroscience guidelines in this area.
The spokesperson said the area had been the subject of discussion at a committee meeting about “emerging technologies”, but no framework was currently being created.
“Ethical responsibility for research in this broad and emerging space is shared by funders, research institutions and researchers, companies, governments and wider society, similar to other emerging technologies such as AI.”
Federal Health Minister Mark Butler and the Department of Health did not respond to questions.
SymbioticA itself is now in what Catts calls “hibernation”.
It closed at UWA in June 2024, but there are discussions underway with AGWA to reopen next year.
Which leaves Perth – through its artists and scientists – not just a spectator, but a player at the sharpest edge of bioethics.
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