---
title: Speculative Systems with Brain Organoids
page_type: course
track: Explore
course_type: Workshop
feature_img: /assets/images/2024-25/year-1/t-2/hnmi.png
img_caption:
faculty:
    - filippo-rosati
ects: 3
---


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## Syllabus

What futures might emerge from a lab-grown brain? This course invites students to explore brain organoids as speculative provocateurs: living, cognitive agents whose unpredictable neural activity challenges how we interpret, frame, and imagine the world around us.  Students will engage with a (mostly) pre-designed digital interface developed by Operating System Studio / Umanesimo Artificiale, which connects to real brain organoid spike data (via Brain Processing Unit API, or Cortical Labs API - collaboration is still pending). This interface transforms neural signals into semantic parameters, feeding them into a custom prompt-generation system powered by an LLM. The result is a cascade of strange, poetic, and speculative questions, invitations to reimagine the worlds embedded in students’ own data collection. A central part of the course is the active collection of real-world, lived data by the students. Through rituals, sensory logs, environmental observation, or embodied tracking (e.g. mood, movement, sound), students create datasets that become stimuli for the organoids. These inputs are then translated into signal formats sent to the biological system, whose neural spike responses generate speculative prompts in return. This creates an evolving feedback process in which students do not simply build speculative worlds, but co-evolve them in collaboration with a nonhuman mind.


**Keywords: Brain organoids, Organoid Intelligence, Cognitive Interfaces, Data-Driven Fiction, Posthuman Thought**

## Learning Objectives

- Understand the fundamentals of brain organoids, organoid intelligence and its creative potential
- Learn how neural spike data can shape language, logic, and worldbuilding scenarios
- Explore critical and poetic frameworks for interpreting nonhuman cognition
- Create artifacts (texts, systems, worlds) shaped through recursive interaction with brain organoids outputs

## Schedule

### Day 1 - Week 1**

- Overview of brain organoids and organoid intelligence
- Introduction to the digital interface designed by Operating System Studio / Umanesimo Artificiale
- Collective brainstorming on real world data to collect (sound, rituals, mood logs, environments)

**Day 2 - Week 2**

- First prompt-generation experiments from student-collected input
- Interfacing: feeding stimuli into the system
- Understanding how neural data modulates prompt styles

**Day 3 - Week 2**

- Use generated questions to begin constructing speculative micro-worlds
- Map unexpected cognitive landscapes from neural activity
- Group critique and reflection: What worldviews does the organoid suggest?

**Day 4 - Week 2**

- Finalize a short speculative artifact or research fragment (e.g., story, visual piece, cultural fragment, design fiction)
- Presentations + open discussion


## Deliverables

- At least one speculative prompt-response artifact per student (text, visual, sound, etc.)
- Final short presentation + reflection


## Grading Method

| Percentage  | Description                                     |
| ----------- | ------------------------------------            |
| 20%         | Participation          |
| 40%         | Creative artifacts                                 |
| 30%         | Personal reflections          |
| 10%         | Self-assessment                                 |

!!! ects "European Credit Transfer and Accumulation System (ECTS)"

    {{ ects }} ECTS

## Material Needs
- Laptops- Internet access
- Access to the platform (provided by instructors)
- OpenAI or local LLM access
- (Optional) sensor kits for real world data collection

## Faculty

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