8 Feb 2009

Guy Ben-Ary: The Scientist Voted Most Likely To Build Robocop

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Posted in: science

Guy Ben-Ary is much like Joe Davis. He is an artist, a scientist, kind of a badass, and completely, egregiously, face-eatingly insane. Guy specializes in biotechnological artwork, in order to push the borders of what we consider living and non-living, and hopefully to enrich our understanding of what it means to be alive. That’s fancy-boy, vest-wearing, Sartre-quoting, jackass speak for “he makes monsters.” And he totally does!

Though they’re not exactly on the Frankenstein level of functional horror, Ben-Ary manipulates living creatures into bizarre roles they would otherwise not occupy, often by combining them with cybernetic parts or other technology. If we’re to be completely honest about his profession? He fucks with life. Actually, let me put that another way: If anybody was going to actually make Robocop a reality, it’s Guy Ben-Ary. I don’t know how, exactly, he learned to do all this crazy shit, but seeing as how there’s no Make A Robocop degree offered at my local Community College, it’s probably safe to say it was through mad experimentation.

So! Let’s roll-call that crazy science:

The Living Screen

He’s rigged up a “bio-projector,” which plays movies using massively magnified living cells for screens. Over time the cells react to the heat, change shape, distort, and eventually die. So if you’re a big movie buff, but you’ve always wanted your theater to bleed out and die after you’re done with the movie, then congratulations! Your dreams have come true! And you’re also creepier than Steve Buscemi in a rhinestone thong. No offense.

Tissue Culture Art

Guy Ben-Ary grows tissue cultures into the forms of Worry-Dolls, which are a South-American children’s totem meant to take all of one’s worries away when placed beneath your pillow. Ben-Ary decided to grow a living worry-doll which, in a supreme twist of irony, worries me immensely. Listen, man, I’ve read enough hackish horror stories by Stephen King regarding dolls and their tendency to spontaneously spring to murderous life to know better than to sleep with even a normal doll beneath my pillow, much less this living monstrosity that looks like it should be constantly screaming in horrific pain. That shit’s just begging to get stabbed while by a toy while it yells stupid science-themed puns like “looks like I’ve poked some holes in your theory!”

MEART

But perhaps most impressive (and simultaneously most disturbing,) is Ben-Ary’s MEART project. On one side of the world - here in the ‘States - is a robotic arm equipped with a projector and some art supplies. On the other side of the world - at Ben-Ary’s lab in Australia - are the brain cells of a rat. The rat brain and robot arm are constnatly networked together, and the rat-brain dictates what the robot arm draws…which are presumably crude pictures of sad rat-faces and hastily scrawled notes that read “kill me!” The rat has recently started to vary colors, frequently returns to certain thematic patterns, and generally seems to be learning and improving rapidly. So, when the World-Wide Cybernetic Rat-Brain Internet inevitably becomes self-aware, and you find yourself suffering through an apocalypse that’s equal parts Stuart Little and The Terminator - well, at least now you know the name of the man that made it all possible.

Guy Ben-Ary: Artist, scientist, badass, psychopath. God surely blesses you, sir, if only because he’s very, very afraid of you.

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  • Great, on top of all this other scary shit, I’m going to bed with visions of Steve Buscemi in a rhinestone thong dancing through my head. Preciate that.

    Josh 8.Feb.2009 9:37 pm

  • Welcome back Robert, how is your new fortress on Skullcrusher Mountain working out for you? Of course I’m sending this comment via tacheyon pulse from my moonbase.

    Brett 9.Feb.2009 9:26 am

  • Dog dongs is back.

    Anon 9.Feb.2009 9:45 am

  • Great Googly-Moogly! He has returned! Welcome back.

    Josh, did you have to use the word dancing? Before that “Steve Buscemi” and “Rhinestone Thong” were two completely separate images. Now it’s Steve Buscemi gyrating in nothing but a rhinestone thong and well polished dress shoes.

    It’s clawing at my eyelids and it won’t go away!

    Bobolequiff 9.Feb.2009 1:16 pm

  • IT WON’T GO AWAY!!

    Bobolequiff 9.Feb.2009 1:17 pm

  • Much more disturbing than the fact that someone wanted to do this is the fact that someone wanted to fund this. I’m talking government or corporate businessmen here.

    “So Mr. Ben-Ary you wish to get a substantial grant… well pitch away”

    “I want to make a living voodoo doll and a rat connected to the internet and a robotic arm”

    “…”

    This guy has two laboratories (according to the infallible Author).

    Doesn’t anyone ask: why? what are your motives for creating a living voodoo doll and a cyber rat. Is he a colony of rats in a man-suit?
    Do you wish do cure the horrible inefficiency of voodoo dolls?
    Make rats more powerful than they’re superior numbers make them.
    Is there corporate support for a ratpocalypse instead of an ordinary robopacalypse?

    Just sharing my mind-farts.

    Sir Fortesque 10.Feb.2009 12:48 am

  • AAAAIIIIGGGGHHHHHHH

    My Eyes! Dancing Rhinestones!
    Roboticly enhanced rodent population!

    Jason 10.Feb.2009 6:02 am

  • Hiya, I’m new here, found this place through cracked…just wanna say awesome-site is awesome.

    MEART ftw, sounds like the thai knockoff canned meat.

    Its not meat, its meart!

    Also- ewwww canned rat brains. *Sadface*

    BlackMage 10.Feb.2009 1:45 pm

  • he created me in his lab and I’m nearly perfect.

    guy's fiance 10.Feb.2009 4:54 pm

  • Brett,

    Thank you, but it’s really more of a quaint cottage with a nice outdoor space and a homely vibe. The garage is the only thing shaped like a skull, and it screams in latin every night until you feed it organs.

    Forts,

    Every single one of those is a perfectly legitimate question to which I cannot even imagine the answer. Beyond the funding issue, how’d the guy in the states secure his money? By standing next to the mad scientist and saying “I’m with that guy on all this crazy shit. It must be done.”

    BlackMage,

    I always pronounced it Meyrt, like it’s Norwegian. Strangely enough, I also thought of meat - not canned, but pickled. This is true.

    Guy’s Fiancee,

    You actually have an .au suffix…could you really be his fiancee? If so, tell him good job on the madness - if science doesn’t keep the masses on their toes, then who will?

    Everybody Else,

    Haha, robots with the hunger and moral apathy of rats are on display, and Buscemi in underwear is still creepier. I hope somebody really loves that poor guy, or his self-esteem must be destroyed, beaten, raped and buried by now.

    Robert 11.Feb.2009 5:53 pm

  • I think it’s pronounced Me-ert, as in Neil Peart from RUSH.

    Dodge 11.Feb.2009 6:25 pm

  • Do you buy your organs from a medical supplier or do you just home harvest? I’m having trouble getting enough to summon the Nyarlathotep to be his avatar on Earth and spread the message of chaos. I’m shooting for the Nyarlathotep but all I can get is Tzeentch or Khorne… which I guess are better than Slaneesh and Nurgle… what with the rape and sadness they bring.

    Brett 11.Feb.2009 8:40 pm

  • If your looking for quantity and the occasional deadly disease the best organs for summoning can be gotten from medical dump yards (infective waste). Slightly fresher by mini-bribing the morgue. Last but not least you can write “free candy” on a van or lure relatives over for tea.

    If you want Nyarlathotep you know you’ll have to prepare that something special.
    Remember: the fresher the better!

    Sir Fortesque 12.Feb.2009 12:04 am

  • I may have put a toe over the line of good taste. Or perhaps kidnapped and raped the good taste mascot.

    Sorry.

    Sir Fortesque 12.Feb.2009 12:06 am

  • look i met this guy-sta once upon a time and he gave me ten dollars to buy a ham burger and then hailed me a taki cab. he a mummy boy, he no bad ass. he a soldier of god! ps. robert i think u my siamese twin x X!

    Shy Bin-Canary 14.Feb.2009 6:47 am

  • Brett, Forts

    I don’t know about any of that goth shit. I just know that I got a nice house for cheap, and that homeless people taste the same as everybody else to demon buildings.

    Shy,

    Personal anecdotes like this make me believe the Simpsons-esque portrayal of Australia as just a small collection of hillbillies living in communal shacks. How else could it be that everytime I mention somebody Australian, another Australian reading my blog always knows them?

    Robert 16.Feb.2009 3:16 pm

  • I’ve actually been trying to take my career in in this direction, and think I have another name of a potential contact for my post grad-school career.

    Keith 28.Feb.2009 2:24 pm

  • There’s a mad scientist grad-school?

    Robert 3.Mar.2009 6:36 am

  • quick question, maybe a bit late. is the rats brain still inside the body or floating in the jar like a less edgy sci-fi character?

    hindershot 3.Mar.2009 9:44 pm

  • I got the idea it was more akin to a jar/culture plate scenario. I picture it expanding rapidly, however, like in The Thing.

    Robert 4.Mar.2009 10:31 am

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