Twitchy Cells

A demonstration together with a short paper giving an overview of the latest outcomes from an ongoing artistic collaboration between computational artist Andy Lomas and the Srinivas Group at the University of Oxford.

Led by Professor Shankar Srinivas in the Department of Physiology, Anatomy and Genetics, the research group is studying the emergence of patterning and morphogenesis of the early mammalian embryo. In particular, they are looking at how concentrations of calcium ions activate contractions in cells, how these transition from random activation of individual cells to structured waves of cells contracting in synchronised patterns, and how these rhythmic motions lead to the development of the heart.

Andy Lomas has been invited by the Srinivas Group to collaborate with them to create an artistic project inspired by their work. In that context he has been developing Twitchy Cells: a system based on his earlier Cellular Forms work but modelling dynamic interactions between cells. Each cell has a potential level and a threshold: if the potential exceeds the threshold it induces the cell to spontaneously contract. When a cell contracts its potential level drops, and there is a short delay before it is ready to be triggered to twitch again, but it also increases the potential levels in its neighbours which can cause them to contract. This creates a system rich enough to support propagating waves of dynamic activity.

As an artistic project this model is designed to explore the wide range of potential emergent behaviour that can be generated by this type of system rather than accurately model observed results, and has been implemented on the GPU to allow real time interaction. This proposal would be to demonstrate work in progress on this project as an interactive installation, allowing users to modify parameters that drive the system, and hear sonified data driven by the simulation as well as see real-time rendered 3D visual results.