Although our approach is fairly reductionistic, we assume that the complexity found in living brain cells is crucial to their function, including their network dynamics. To be useful and easy to control and study, a model necessarily is a simpler version of what it models. We study the brain using a synthetic approach, building from scratch a simple artificial animal, a new type of model for studying the brain. The emergence of the mind from its biological substrate is one of the greatest and most complex mysteries. It is the source of all true art and all science.”-Albert Einstein, 1931 “The most beautiful thing we can experience is the mysterious. It has paved the way for critical discussions on the future of bio-art and of biotechnology. In a broader context, MEART educates the public about neuroscience, neural interfaces, and robotics. The interfacing technologies and algorithms developed have potential applications in responsive deep brain stimulation systems and for motor prosthetics using sensory components. This approach to neural interfacing will help instruct the design of other hybrid neural-robotic systems we call hybrots. We used MEART and simulated embodiments, or animats, to study the network mechanisms that produce adaptive, goal-directed behavior. Such embodied cultured networks formed a real-time closed-loop system which could now behave and receive electrical stimulation as feedback on its behavior. We built a pneumatically actuated robotic arm to create drawings, as controlled by a living network of neurons from rat cortex grown on a multi-electrode array (MEA). Here, we and others describe an unusual neurorobotic project, a merging of art and science called MEART, the semi-living artist. SymbioticA, School of Anatomy and Human Biology, University of Western Australia, Australia Laboratory for Neuroengineering, School of Mechanical Engineering, Georgia Institute of Technology, USA