What is Life? The Artistic Aspect of the Embodied Intelligence and Soft Robotics: Life in Sonic Arts, Audio-Visual Programming, and Handicrafts Design

The artistic aspect is the ‘dancer’ (Gary Zukav) [7] in the machine. There is an embryonic potentiality for embodied intelligence, soft robotics, and engineering if we emphasise the artistic aspect and employ it as an indispensable element. Art is less weighted in science, technology, and engineering than functionalities and applications. Equivalently, there is a potential under-explored advantage of science and technology-based artistic creation instead of individualistic improvisation, interpretation, and expression. Starting from the philosophical and scientific question, What is life? this paper reviewed influential theories from entropy, ‘code-script’ by Erwin Schrödinger, ‘wetware’, cell compartmentation by Paul Nurse, sentient machine by Anil Seth, to the ‘Dance’ by Gary Zukav, the ‘30 000’ organ by Denis Noble, the 100,000 protein sonification by Markus Buehler, and a bio-inspired composition by Alberto Carretero using P-system. With my research on cell-inspired audio-visual works The Cell Planet using Touch Designer, music creation for the Protein Misfolding project, and the soft-robotic inspired biomimetic textiles and art, this paper provides solutions for integrating technology, science, engineering, and art from a deeper, experimental, and philosophical context.


Introduction
If there are questions about life, then one of the most fundamental enquiries should be what life is.Before presenting my approach towards this question, I would like to introduce three influential pioneers: Erwin Schrödinger, Sir Paul Nurse, and Alan Turing, together with their extraordinary ideas and contributions.
Amongst these three notable figures, there is only one biologist: Sir Paul Nurse.Erwin Schrödinger is a physicist, and Alan Turing is a mathematics and computer scientist.There are two books published at different times, but with similar titles: "What is life?The Physical Aspect of the Living Cell" by Erwin Schrödinger in 1944 [1], and "What is Life?Understand Biology in Five Steps" by Sir Paul Nurse in 2020 [2].Alan Turing's article "The Chemical Basis of Morphogenesis (1952)" [3] is an informatics approach towards life.

What is life?
2.1.Life as Entropy Schrödinger introduced entropy into the enquiry for what is life.He proposed that life feeds on 'negative entropy' to keep it from dying [1].Because non-living things have a tendency towards the high entropy (high disorder and low energy) from low entropy (high orderliness and low energy), to reach the state of thermodynamical equilibrium [1].

The language of life
The nuclein was named by Friedrich Miescher in 1869.He discovered the chemical compositions of nucleins: nitrogen and phosphorus.However, the function of the nuclein (DNA) remained unknown.
Nine years before decoding the double-helix structure of DNA, Schrödinger proposed a genius viewpoint on the 'aperiodic crystal' [1].He defined this 'crystal' with an innovative, visionary, precise, and insightful name: the 'code-script' [1].Once again, he opened another door to biology using a new key: informatics.This idea, later, influenced Crick and Watson on the decipherment of the DNA structure.
The linear structural character of DNA, which exists as a three-dimensional state, is an exquisite 'design' to accurately memorise, transcript, and instruct life.I am emphasising the linear structure here because this structure determines the direction to successfully read and interpret this 'code-script' must be strictly 'one-way', which significantly reduces the possibility of fault occurrence in DNA replication processes.And the folded double-helix structure gives DNA a crucial ability to store an enormous amount of information using an extremely small space inside the cell.
To consider life from the informatics perspective is a breakthrough in biology.It opens a door for scientists to simulate, mimic, interpret life, and more importantly, visually 'see' the intricate chemical structures as 'scripts', so that we can 'read', illustrate, and decode the meaning of hidden language within living forms.The core of life, after Schrödinger's 'code-script', Crick and Watson's double-helix structure, and the decades of works by biologists, have been becoming 'readable'.The three-dimensional dark structure of the cell is now opened and transformed into the language of life.
Although life as information is still not the final answer to what is life, it provides us with an innovative approach to logically understanding the mechanisms of living beings and linguistically interpreting the meanings of all these most fundamental chemical reactions within the cell.We can interpret them as if reading Shakespeare that was written in an ancient, or even an alien language.We can even 'hear' and understand them by decoding the symphonies of metabolism into meaningful vowels, grammars, sonatas, or even spells.

2.3.
The 'wetware' and non-life When Alan Turing invented the Automatic Computing Engine using punch-card, it became the starting point of the modern computer.The computers we are using today are a typical strand of hardware.And the apps or graphical operating systems (Windows, Mac or Linux) are software.
The term 'wetware', however, was introduced by biologist Dennis Bray in his book Wetware: A Computer in Every Living Cell (2009) [4].He gives life another insightful, definitive, and 'fashionable' description.Both biologist Sir Paul Nurse and Neuroscientist Professor Anil Seth discussed the 'wetware' in their books to nominate what is life.
With the development of artificial intelligence, the boundary between life and computer seems to become blurry.I would, however, disagree with the universal growing expectations on the vanishment of the boundary between organisms and machines.Because the term 'wetware' means life is based on selforganized physical and chemical reactions, rather than virtually imitating, mimicking or simulating life forms, or mechanically operating under the instructions.
If, nevertheless, there will be an invention of a real 'wetware' and 'wet-machine', how could it be, and what does it look like?Must it be made from 'sampled', hybrid, modified, or cultured bits and pieces from any scales of living beings?If so, then, does it have any fundamental biochemical difference between you, me, or all living forms on earth?If it must be made from the real organisms or even the most basic organelles in cells, it no longer strictly belongs to artificial intelligence, it is the synthesis of the cultivating, culturing, growing, and breeding of our own living forms.It is biology.
Alan Turing was asked the by the question: can digital computer think?He had been refusing to give an answer until May 1951 in his lecture on BBC Radio.He proposed an interesting view on machine: the ability of imitating human and human brain [3].Turing also believe that as a machine, computer can provide us with a significant useful way to look at how our intelligence works [3].Alongside his preeminent answer to the question, I would, however, argue that the 'imitational machine' itself is not sufficient to be equalled with a biologically cell-based conscious living brain, which is part of a 'selfsustaining biological organism'.
The 'self-sustaining biological organism' was proposed, seventy years after Turing's lecture, in the book "Being You A New Science of Consciousness" (2021) by Professor Anil Seth [5].As a notable neuroscientist, he argues that it should be biotechnology, not artificial intelligence, which seems to be the right approach toward synthetic consciousness as it requires real neurons [5].He also points out that this self-maintenance mechanism can go down from humans to the level of cells.He demonstrated that intelligence and consciousness are not necessary links together, and being conscious is not necessarily applied to being a cell or even any living organism [5].
I would like to briefly summarize Anil's idea as the following equations: Life ≠ Consciousness Life ≠ Intelligence (including AI)

Life ≠ Machine
Life ≠ Consciousness + Intelligence (including AI) + Machine Beside of his demonstration on 'wetware', Anil discussed the sense of human's feeling with machines: 'just making computers smarter is not going to make them sentient' [5].It can be summarized as: Sentient ≠ intelligence (including AI) + machine (computer) Back to Turing's question: can digital computers think?I would argue that the think here refers to the (artificial) intelligence aspect of, with, and from life.However, the ability 'to think' does not even belong to any fundamental definitions of life.A computer is not a life.
Then what can be defined as a life?In the book "What is Life?Understand Biology in Five Steps", Sir Paul Nurse explicitly summarized the most fundamental principles of life.Life is based on the bounded physical entities with physical metabolism going on, and the ability to evolve, grow and reproduce.And it is the line to draw life from non-life [1].
Although the question of life has long been floating up in the air and remaining unsolved, it exists as a compass for intellectually adventurous scientists, philosophers, and artists to discover humans and nature.It constantly leads our childlike curiosities to decode all the hidden mysteries and hypotheses in our lives.This enquiry has also triggered my research and my approaches towards life.He presented a 'solution' of how to make a cell.There are six principles: a continuous supply of reactive carbon; a supply of free energy to drive metabolic biochemistry; catalysts; excretion of waste; compartmentalisation; heredity material [6].
Although the 'recipe' and hypophysis by Nick Lane is yet to be physically achieved, it is a perfect solution to generate the 'living cell' virtually, visually, sonically, and 'soft-robotically'.

The Wu li of life
American spiritual teacher Gary Zukav depicted Bohm's implicate order as "that-which-is" [7]in the final Chapter of his book The Dancing Wu Li Masters (1979).He uses the "dance" as a metaphor for breaking symbolic boundaries such as "Things", "matters", or "particles".And the "dance "here, as that-which-is, leads my enquiry from biological to vibrations, such as sound and music.[8] and the sound of life In the book The Music of Life: Biology beyond Genes (2006), Denis Noble presented a novel idea, "An organ of 30 000 pipes".He demonstrated the "helpfulness" of musical analogy to represent the human genome (around 30 000 genes).He proposed that the "world's largest organs" can enable the music of life to be played and heard.[8] Inspired by his idea, and with the help of up-to-date digital audio workstation (DAW), I developed a sonic approach to protein misfolding as a contribution to what is life?In the following chapter, 3.2.

The music of life
American scientist Prof. Markus J. Buehler at MIT published a paper in 2019 on the sonification of over 100,000 protein structures.He proved that the "Things (or particles)" in our body could be translated into sound and music following a scientific way.[9] The visual programming language Max MSP is much more logical, repeatable, and controllable compared with the "world's biggest organs".Highly influenced by Markus's work, in the next chapter, 3.1, I applied another visual programming language Touch Designer with Logic Pro, to my science-oriented audio-visual art creation.And I applied the vibrational spectrums method to the analysis section of the music I created in chapter 3.2, which reflects the vibrational spectrum that Markus uses for obtaining protein database.
Last but not least, composer Alberto Carretero's music piece Parallel Lives [10] emphasises the artistic application and outcomes of music, despite the application of cellular automata membrane computing called P-system by Gheorghe Păun.Additionally, in his paper on composing bio-inspired ensemble music using AI, he argues that the artistic result cannot be guaranteed by using scientific applications and methods, [11] which means artistic interpretation is the key to making the results aesthetic.The "artistic results" here, or the aesthetic aspect of life, cell, physics, soft robotics, and vibrations, is the purpose of my conference proceedings.Alberto's mastering of micro percussion sound using classical instruments, mini-loudspeakers, and non-musical instruments gave the ensemble a rich, organic, lively, and slightly randomised sound personality during performing and improvisation, as if the "Dance" by Gary Zukav.And this inspired my choice of the musical instruments in Logic Pro for the protein misfolding project in chapter, 3.2.

My Approaches to life 3.1. The Cell Planet: life in Audio-Visual Arts
The Cell Planet was an audio-visual collection that I created in November 2021 [12].A living cell is a good example of compartmentation [2], inspired by this concept, which Sir Paul Nurse has also mentioned in his book, I chose TouchDesigner as the node-based visual programming language It is an ideal software to create audio-visual content in real-time.Because the design of this software has many resemblance features with metabolic pathways.And the system is formed with many small operators as controllers.All the controllers can be connected by wiring them together.Same as the cell, the organelles are bounded by membranes, they communicate with each other through invisible chemical wires.The patchworks are a mimic of sections of metabolic pathways, with feedbacks, controls, input, output, oscillators, and random scrips.By using the example of the clarinet sound on the previous page, the relationship between the noise and with scripts can be vividly interpreted.In biology, the fundamental building blocks of the noise or metabolism are the processes of creating, transcription, transporting, and reading the 'code scripts.Each 'code scripts' has a series of linear messages, even if they are physically existing.This opened my hypophysis on the sonic approach to life.By simulating the codes in a living cell, we can create the noise and play with it.It will be a constant, self-organising, and dynamic sound.In TouchDesigner, there are also noise operators for generating pixels and sound spectrums.What is randomness?Sonically, per se, I would argue random is the discrete perception of what is going to happen before it comes.Taking the Brownian motion as an example, the randomness happens before we see the whole process or the 'walk'.After the random walk is accomplished, however, you see a continuous linear pathway, and the randomness has gone.Musically, the random sound is extremely vital to creating timbre, particularly in digital music creating.When someone is talking to you, normally the meaning of the sentence will come when it is finished.
A living cell is a life form that uses various materials in the natural environment to grow and reproduce.The randomness comes from the environment's constantly influence on the cell.And the cell is reacting to the changes in the environment.By applying randomness as a mimetic 'ambient background' to nature into audio and visual art can make the creations look and sound much 'lifely'.What is feedback?The first four alphabets, in my view, is the key: feed.Sonically, the shapes of the sound waves both from input and output are the potential elements to generate resonance or entangled sound waves, which is the 'sonic liquid reaction field'.The 'feed', however, is the upcoming resonance frequencies, which can be detectable, recognisable, absorbable, influenceable, and functional interactional with the pre-existing sound field.These aspects are also applicable in defining the 'feed' within the cell.Put it amusingly, to feed my dog with a banana is not the proper feed.Because if we want to create good feedback, the delicate control of the time, volume, pitch, and surroundings are the most important points to generate the 'feed'.Visually, feedback can also create 'lifelike' motions.By sampling applying the feedback operator in TouchDesigner and adjusting the 'feed' to get the right to resonate, you can create incredible motions.The Landscape in The Cell Planet, for example, the beautiful and organic animation was created by only three operators: noise, feedback, and composition.The frequencies used in Tibetan Singing Bowls are different from the tuning of conventional instruments used in a symphony such as piano, clarinet, and violin.There are many spaces between each tone because I want to define the space between each tone as the high entropy (high disorder) environment around the healthy protein, which enables sufficient mobilities, fluencies and exchange between each different kind of protein.And the various timbres within this short piece represent the good biochemical density, rather than one dominant protein as the uniformed monophony.If, according to Schrödinger, the environment beside the living parts is orderliness, then it means that the energy formed during the folding process is difficult to exit.After creating the 'good protein', I simply copied the same score into eight tracks and set them into different instruments.The instruments are chosen because they can produce harmonious sound, and they are profoundly used in symphonies and many other forms of Classical music.I orderlessly arranged the starting points of each track to generate a high entropy, according to Schrödinger's equation [1] [17].As this workshop has a limited time requirement, I only use the starting points and one volume as variants.But the result was good.It sounds as if many autonomous robots are assembling bits and pieces of components in a little nice factory.And they sounded like they were working in an orderly way.

Protein misfolding
From the aspects and causes of this disease, according to Professor Louise, I captured five keywords: dehydrated, stack, sticky, strong, and stable.Especially when Louise depicts the protein assembling process, I can vividly see that the entire fibre was built by the same little 'bricks' of Amyloid Beta protein as they are only self-associating.Back to the music I created, I 'mutated' the 'good protein', and created the 'Amyloid Beta protein' track.I applied EQ adjustment to that natural, holly, and tranquil music.The amplified lower frequencies and their emphasised strong resonance created a completely new, dark, greedy, unsettling, unbreathing, and evil sensation.
[18] This feature is set to stimulate stickiness, as strong and stable as spider webs, and dehydration.From the entropy aspect, I have added a large amount of energy [1] to this music.Following the structure and formation of the Amyloid Beta fibre, I copied this 'mutated Amyloid Beta sound' twelve times, and, strictly laid them together as if stacking the Amyloid Beta proteins.I arranged the 'Amyloid Beta fibre' using the 'Amyloid Beta protein' tracks in the same length, same beginning, same volume, same effects, and same instrument.
[19] As you can see, this is protein misfolding.It looks as if nothing was properly composed by a professional musician, but, unexpectedly, it was the most outstanding piece of the three.All of the tracks are designed with an 'absolute' high orderliness.According to Schrödinger's entropy equation [1], this structure (both my music and the real protein) will have an extremely high life index (high energy), moreover, by overlaying them together will tremendously amplify any resonance in the music, which created twelve times resonances on each pitch.This is to say, in the natural selection process within the human body, this abnormally high orderliness 'lifely' structure will have a much higher advantage to grow than our normal structures.When the balance of growing and decaying is broken, a new level of entropy [1] is being set, and the tendency towards ever higher orderliness will unceasingly drive the organism towards illness, defunctioning, and death.The significant difference in sound volume and micro-rhythmics is demonstrated clearly by looking at the frequency range 380 Hz -600 Hz.The sonic spectrums in Figure 19 is more randomised and segmented compare with the sonic spectrums in Figure 20.By listening the sounds on SoundCloud [18, 19] and looking at the these frequency range, the amplified orderliness [1, 2] can be found.
Figure 21.Detailed spectrum visualisation of 'Amyloid Beta Protein' in Sonic Visualiser (left) [18] vs Detailed spectrum visualisation of 'Amyloid Beta fibre' (right) [19]in Sonic Visualiser colour: Green; scale: Meter; Gain: 0dB).x: bin frequency in hertz, y: time; red colour on green shows the loudness of the sound.
These two detailed sonic spectrum visualisations revealed another distinguishing feature.By comparing the 'mutated' 'Amyloid Beta protein' (left) [18] with the 'chained' 'Amyloid Beta fibre' (right) [19], we noticed, that aside from the amplification of each unit sound, a sign of uniformity and rhythmical homogenisation has been generated.It looks as if the sound is becoming segmented, crystalised, hard, sticky (magnetically), rocklike, and chaining together like the zips.The peculiarities of dehydration, orderliness and self-association.This character is identical to the Alpha Beta sheets demonstrated by Louise.
Sonically, this visualised of 'Amyloid Beta fibre' is a successful attempt to life.It proves that by exclusively fuelling biology principles into Erwin Schrödinger's entropy equation can simulate life through sound spectrums.Must it be a truism that the orderliness (low entropy and high energy) by Schrödinger is the universal law, the Misfolding piece indeed attracted the most audiences, rather than the loosely, but intellectually, effortfully, and seriously arranged other two pieces.And that might be a reasonable explanation that you can hardly hear any music by John Cage [20] in a gym or a McDonald's.

Hope for protein refolding
The idea for refolding is a hope that misfolded fibres between the neurons can become softened, detectable, and 'willingly cooperative'.I slightly swung the concrete stacking shapes of the bricks and applied a relatively large number of tracks with varieties of instruments.The instruments range from violas to Brooklyn drums, from Liverpool bass to tuba.[21]The variations of instruments that I have applied in this piece are according to the balance and diversity of biochemical 'species'.Because the unfriendly, greedy, self-associated, attractive, and xenophobic Amyloid Beta protein is based on creating this uniformly homogentisic orderliness.In other words, the biochemical structures, and the microenvironment around them are constantly gathering and forming high entropy and high energy [1], which consumes much more energy than normal biochemical reactions and dispossess the quantity of other healthy proteins.
According to the visualisation in Sonic Visualiser, you can see the magnetic rock-like segmented metal chain has been broken.The tones are breezily distributed and naturally spaced with interactions.It sounds amusing with thunder-like lower frequencies, which brings a sense of ease and humour while knocking off all the selfish chains.Again, the result is achieved by reducing the entropy.

3.3.4.
Biomimetic design: "The Amino Acid Skeleton" "The Amino Acid Skeleton" is a semi-fabric prototype and semi-soft sculpture mimicking the amino acid chain, designed by Shu Yang at the University of Brighton in 2020.This "skeleton" has a soft, flexible, flowy but strong and restrained characteristic, which physically represents the abstract structures with a touchable feature rather than the virtual representations under electronic scopes.This project has been suspended due to the workshop facilities' disruptions of the lockdown during the pandemic.
"The Amino Acid Skeleton"has been applied two times to the short video for the "Misfolding" project by the Centre for Research in Opera and Music Theatre and the Serpell Lab in the School of Life Sciences at the University of Sussex in 2021 and 2022 [22].
Figure 29."Misfolding Through the Looking Glass" (2022).[22] 3.3.5.Soft robotics-inspired handicraft: "The Soft Harpsichordia" "The Soft Harpsichordia" is a soft robotic-inspired soft musical instrument by Shu Yang at the University of Brighton in 2020 [23].This design aims to create a prototype based on controllable shapes to create another layer of physical improvisational elements for contemporary instruments and digital audio workstations.This project has been suspended due to the workshop facilities' disruptions of the lockdown during the pandemic.This "Harpsichordia" has the same purpose as embodied intelligence, although it is niched in material art or handicrafts.

Discussion
Soft Robotics have the most significant potential to create forms of life physically using the essential material with innovative ideas and technologies.On the other hand, Embodied intelligence has created remarkable opportunities for researchers from diverse disciplines to contribute to this community.The cross-disciplinary collaborations have generated extraordinary contributions in science, technology, arts, media, design, and humanities.As a multi-disciplinary researcher, I introduced my most recent artworks and research focusing on the artistic aspect of science, technology, and engineering.This emphasis on art can give solutions from another perspective for artistic and scientific innovations.Finally, back to the question at the beginning, I would like to end this chapter by quoting three sentences from Shunryū Suzuki [24], Erwin Schrödinger [25] and Denis Noble [8]:

Figure 1 .
Figure 1.Touch Designer Patchworks in "The Cell Planet: The lives".3.1.1.The noise and noiseIf you 'look' inside of the living cell, what you will see is enormous chemical reactions happening dynamically and constantly every second.If putting all these reactions equally together on a screen or by hearing them sonically from an amplifier at one time, what you will see or hear will be the noise.The noise is the gateway to looking inside of life.However, the noise here in the living cell has fundamental distinctions from the noise from the natural environment or non-living forms.

Figure 2 .
Figure 2. Touch Designer Patchworks and outcomes in "The Cell Planet: The lives".
3.1.2.'absTime.seconds'and randomness: when you look back, you see your pathwayThe python code 'absTime.seconds'for generating random numbers is very useful and crucial when simulating life.Same as Brownian motion[1], Alan Turing introduced random numbers and diffusion in his 'Morphogenesis'[3].

Figure 3 .
Figure 3. Touch Designer Patchworks and outcomes in "The Cell Planet: the lives".

Figure 4 .
Figure 4. Touch Designer Patchworks and outcomes in "The Cell Planet: The landscapes".

Figure 5 .
Figure 5. Box model of implanting noise and feedback in Touch Designer.

Figure 9 .
Figure 9. Spectrum visualisation of the music: 'good protein' in Sonic Visualiser (colour: Green; scale: Meter; Gain: 0dB).x: bin frequency in hertz, y: time; red colour on green shows the loudness of the sound.[16]

Figure 25 .
Figure 25."Cellulose".3.3.2.Smart fabric design 1: "The Random Emotion"The Random Emotion is an experimental fabric design woven by Shu Yang at the University of Brighton during his MA time (2019-2020).It is an innovative application of inflatable PVC tubes with wool and cotton.The fabric's shape, weight, temperature, and density are controllable by blowing air or liquid into the tubes.This project has been suspended due to the workshop facilities' disruptions of the lockdown during the pandemic.
[15]olding: life in Sonic Arts "Misfolding" public engagement was a project collaborated the Centre for Research in Opera and Music Theatre and the Serpell Lab in the School of Life Sciences at the University of Sussex[14][15].Protein folding Following the descriptions of normal protein folding compared with misfolding, I first created a very simple, ambient, and tranquil short piece, using Tibetan Singing Bowls in Logic Pro.Because the sound of singing bowls and bells can generate a very healing and natural sound, together with many microtones.[16] Waves are the practice of the water."-Shunryū Suzuki, Zen Mind, Beginner's Mind: Informal Talks on Zen Meditation and Practice "It seems to me that what I call the construction of an external world that really exists is identical with what you call the describablilty of the individual situation that occurs only once."A letter to Einstein on 18 November 1950 -Erwin Schrödinger, Letters on Wave Mechanics (1967), p. 37 "If there is an organ, and some music, who is the player, and who was the composer?And is there a conductor?"-Denis Noble, The Music of Life: Biology beyond Genes (2006), p. 32