What research does the artineer lab publish?

The artineer research lab publishes peer-reviewed work at the intersection of bio-art, AI, human-computer interaction, and educational technology. Publications include work at SIGGRAPH Asia (2024 and 2025), UIST, and CHI 2026 in Barcelona. Research topics include neural cellular automata for living art, wireless electronic textiles, embodied artificial life, and academic publishing infrastructure.

What is Mycelian Micro's research basis?

Mycelian Micro grew from research presented at SIGGRAPH Asia 2024 Art Papers in Tokyo — specifically, experiments in using controllable laser light to pattern fungal growth on agar plates using Mucor species. The research is also the basis for the funguy.ai commercial STEAM kit.

What is artineer's research focus in AI and bio-art?

artineer research explores artificial life systems that participate in ecological processes — using neural cellular automata, living biological media, and AI-generated patterns to create artwork where computation and biology co-evolve. This was presented at SIGGRAPH Asia 2025 Art Papers.

What is the interactives authoring platform and why was it built?

interactives is a custom academic authoring and publishing system built to support multimedia-native, practice-based research papers. It allows embedded video, interactive elements, and collaborative authoring — features unavailable in PDF-centric systems like Overleaf. A user study showed the system is 8.7× faster than Overleaf for interactive manuscripts. The research was presented at CHI 2026 in Barcelona.

Where is artineer lab research published?

artineer lab research has been published and presented at: SIGGRAPH Asia (2024 Art Papers, Tokyo; 2025 Art Papers, Tokyo), CHI 2026 (Barcelona, Spain), UIST, and preprint releases on interactives.pub.

artineer Research Lab — Bio-Art, AI & HCI Research

About the lab

Research as a form of teaching.

The artineer research lab operates at the intersection of art, biology, and computation. Our work doesn't stay in the lab — every research thread becomes a product, a kit, a publication, or a new educational approach.

We believe that the best educational materials come from the frontier — that learners deserve to work with ideas and tools that are genuinely new, not simplified versions of old knowledge.

To make that possible at scale, we're building Cultigen — an AI engine that turns frontier research into teachable curriculum, a working interactive, and a buildable kit, in minutes instead of years.

Peer-reviewed publications

International institutions & summits

∞

Research problems worth exploring

Research areas

Three frontiers.
One lab.

Bio-art & Living Computation

Using biological organisms — fungi, bacteria, plant systems — as computational and artistic media. How does light, chemistry, and environment shape growth? Can we program living things to draw?

Mycology NCA simulation Bio-fabrication

AI-assisted Creativity

Neural cellular automata, generative models, and AI tools as creative and educational instruments. How can AI simulation help learners understand biological and physical systems?

Neural CA Generative AI Creative tools

Educational Technology

Antidisciplinary curriculum design, identity-based learning, and technology tools that reduce the distance between professional practice and student experience.

Pedagogy Curriculum design EdTech

Active projects

Research in progress.

Projects currently running in the artineer lab.

Active 2025 – present

Programmable Electrostatic Flocking

Automated Zonal Flocking on 3D-Printed Surfaces via Structural Modulation

Programmable Electrostatic Flocking — structural modulation detail

Electrostatic Flocking 3D Printing Material Computing

Active 2026 – present

Only the Mortal Cohabit

Slime Mold, AI, and Finitude as the Condition of More-than-Human Cohabitation

Living Physarum polycephalum slime mold under an AI-driven laser system — practice-based cohabitation research

Physarum polycephalum exploratory network — basal cognition and the ontology of finitude

A three-act interactive installation couples living Physarum polycephalum — a brainless slime mold that demonstrates basal cognition — to an AI-driven laser, holding everything constant but the ontological status of the "other" it meets. It argues that cohabitation with humanoid AI turns not on intelligence but on finitude — reframing the question from "is it smart enough?" to "can it die?"

Bio-Art Basal Cognition AI × Ethics

Publications

Peer-reviewed output.

Click any paper stack to browse page by page, or click "Preview pages" to open the reader.

Art Papers SIGGRAPH Asia 2024 Tokyo, Japan

"Exploring Fungal Morphology Simulation and Dynamic Light Containment from a Graphics Generation Perspective"

Kexin Wang · Ivy He · Jinke Li · Ali Asadipour · Yitong Sun

Reframes fungal morphology simulation as a 2D graphic time-series generation problem and introduces a zero-coding neural cellular automaton trained on real Mucor growth. Demonstrates dynamic laser containment that guides living fungal growth into designed shapes.

Method

Neural CA + Dynamic Light

Organism

Mucor — photophobic fungus

Read on ACM DL ↗ See the kit →

Mycelian Micro research paper — SIGGRAPH Asia 2024, page 5

Mycelian Micro research paper — SIGGRAPH Asia 2024, page 4

Mycelian Micro research paper — SIGGRAPH Asia 2024, page 3

Mycelian Micro research paper — SIGGRAPH Asia 2024, page 2

Mycelian Micro research paper — SIGGRAPH Asia 2024, cover page

Art Papers SIGGRAPH Asia 2025

"Participatory Evolution of Artificial Life Systems via Semantic Feedback"

Presents a semantic-feedback framework treating natural language as a regulatory signal for evolving artificial-life systems. Text shapes the dynamics of an interactive ecosystem, allowing audiences to cultivate agent-based systems through language interaction.

Area

Artificial life · Semantic feedback

Type

Generative systems · NLP

Read on ACM DL ↗

Extended Abstracts CHI 2026

"!nteractivesPub: Redistributing Author and Reader Effort through Interactive Academic Authoring"

An accessible authoring and publishing workflow enabling researchers to embed multimedia assets and interactive components directly into academic manuscripts — rethinking how dynamic, process-oriented research is communicated in scholarly venues.

Area

HCI · Interactive publishing

Product

interactives.pub

Read on ACM DL ↗ interactives.pub ↗

Adjunct UIST 2025

"Ori-TENG: 3D Printed Origami Tessellations as Triboelectric Nanogenerators for Self-powered Sensing and Energy Harvesting"

A design and fabrication framework for 3D printed origami tessellations that function as triboelectric sensors and energy harvesters. Structures are printed flat in a single step then folded — internal routing optimized for both folding mechanics and triboelectric performance.

Area

Fabrication · Origami · Sensing

Type

Energy harvesting · TENG

Read on ACM DL ↗

Under Review Manuscript 2025 Research in progress

"Designing Embodied Artificial Life as Ecological Participation Agents"

Artineer Lab · Anonymous for Review

Presents PlantwormSim — a biohybrid prototype coupling plant electrophysiological sensing with a distributed pneumatic rhizosphere actuation grid. Plant bioelectric signals modulate cellular automata rules that drive soft "earthworm" agents through the soil, forming a closed-loop plant–soil–machine ecosystem. Reframes agricultural computation as ecological participation rather than centralized control.

Area

Embodied A-life · Soft Robotics

Type

Multispecies · Ecological Computing

See the kit →

Collaborations

The institutions that have engaged with our work.

MIT ACT

Arts, Culture & Technology at MIT — seminar presentation and ongoing dialogue around bio-art and living systems design.

BioFabricate

World's leading bio-innovation summit — presented Mycelian Micro and sat in conversation with BioFabricate's CEO.

ACM SIGGRAPH

Association for Computing Machinery — published research in the SIGGRAPH Asia 2024 Art Papers track.

Interested in research collaboration?

We welcome partnerships with universities, institutions, and labs working at the intersection of art, technology, and education. Whether you want to co-author, share equipment, or explore a joint research question — reach out.

Start a conversation →

Where ideas
become evidence.

Research as a form of teaching.