CL1 Biocomputer, TouchDesigner, and Unreal Engine 2025
Presented in partnership with NCM PC provided by Aftershock PC
National Communication Museum (Melbourne, Australia)
Explore the biosynthetic future of computing in this collaboration with Melbourne’s Cortical Labs. The instalment of NCM’s industry-led R+D space introduces audiences to the world’s first code-deployable biological computer.
What is organic intelligence? What are the implications of this technology, and how will it be used? Integrating real, living neurons into a synthetic computer chip, Cortical Labs’ CL1 Biocomputer demonstrates the power and potential of this new form of learning.
Through an experimental research and response visualization developed by the University of the Arts London’s Jenn Leung, audiences will interface with the CL1, seeing their inputs directly processed by the neurons in a 3D virtual environment.
Beyond artificial intelligence, this partnership with Cortical Labs demonstrates a new kind of actual intelligence: one that is living and active.
A camera continuously observes the exhibition space. Using TouchDesigner, participants’ movements are abstracted into anonymous blob tracking data. These movement patterns are translated into custom stimulation patterns that are sent to the CL1.
Electrical signals stimulate specific electrodes on a high-density MEA, interfacing directly with living neurons. These stimulations can be shaped into a pattern to represent any type of information, from game worlds to handwritten digits.
In response to the movement data, the neurons produce spiking activity as they process and adapt to these inputs. The CL1 streams this raw neural activity data in real time via UDP (User Datagram Protocol) to Unreal Engine as generative source of a visual narrative.
A closed-loop interaction occurs between humans in the space and the living neurons interfaced within CL1, both functioning simultaneously as subjects in a living computational ecology. 'Closed-Loop Connections' is a prototype for a form of hybrid agency in human-bioengineered intelligence interaction.
Project by Jenn Leung and Cortical Labs
Curated by Jemimah Widdicombe
Special thanks to Brett Kagan, David Hogan, Duncan Crombie,
Cameron Holman and Callum Stewart
Image © Cortical Labs. All rights reserved. This exhibition includes text, graphics, images and hardware provided by Cortical Labs and reproduced with permission.