Many contemporary theories of art — for example that art is a means of expressing social or political ideas — assume the involvement of humans. But can a few thousand rat neurons tell us something about politics? Can the fruit of rat brain cells' electrical firings be employed as a basis for examining society in a new way? When it comes to art produced by humans, it isn't difficult to answer "yes" to such questions, but it just doesn't seem applicable in this new context.
This offers strong backing for those who defend the "intentional fallacy," a 20th century concept used in the arts and literary criticism to refer to the idea that the meaning of piece of art or work of literature is either entirely or at least largely dependent upon the intentions of the author. According to such critics, it is impossible to really know what an author meant and, besides, meaning is ultimately created in the relationship between the reader/audience and the piece in question. If a work of art has a "political" meaning, it's because of how we relate to it and not because of what the "artist" (be it a human being or a collection of rat neurons) might have intended.
It might also provide backing for the concept of "aestheticism," a concept used in art to refer to any trend which argues that art is self-sufficient and justifies its own existence, thus rejecting an opposing perspective which assumes that art must have some other purpose for existence and must be evaluated by non-aesthetic standards (moral, political, social, etc.). Aestheticism has been largely abandoned in aesthetic theory, but technological developments may force a reappraisal.
All of this hinges, of course, on whether we are willing to label the final drawings created by a collection of rat neurons as being "art" or not. If so, why — because they produce a pleasant aesthetic experience for us? But why do they produce such an experience? The sight of a starry sky may produce such an experience, but we don't call that "art," do we? Isn't that because there was no human agency involved? If we don't call the drawings "art," is it because of the absence of human agency — either working for the sake of producing such reaction or for the sake of communicating some political, social, or moral message?
Currently the output of the rat neurons isn't very complex, but the project is only in its earliest stages. Professor Steve Potter of the the Wallace H. Coulter Department of Biomedical Engineering at Georgia Tech and Emory University has said "We're attempting to create an entity that over time will evolve, learn, and express itself through art." Express itself? What is "it" — is there a coherent "it," a single entity that is more than just a collection of neurons?
There's a lot more going on here than just a question about what is art — we are also being forced to confront what the "self" is. Who or what is it that "creates" art in the first place? A lot would presumably depend upon interaction with the environment, and the researchers are replicating that as well by providing the neurons in Atlanta with feedback from the activity of the robotic arm in Perth.
What if the researchers used human brain cells for this experiment — would the resulting entity be human? Would it have rights? Assuming that we are talking about an "entity" (which is somewhat debatable, but perhaps not very), this isn't one which is lying passively in stasis somewhere. No, it is actively engaged with at least a portion of its environment — not only learning, but in fact creating something new because of that interaction.
If we are going to say that such a collection of human neurons, acting independently and in new ways, is "alive," then it seems that we will be forced to reconsider just what it means to be a living human being in the first place. We'll be forced to reconsider what makes us "us" — and we'll be doing so in the context of the creation of art. It has been said that one of the things which distinguishes "higher" animals is the process of artistic creation — is that perhaps even more true than has been assumed?
