Brain Cell is a mail art project begun by Ryosuke Cohen in June 1985. The project is basically a networked art project where individual artists create their own 30x42cm work of art with stamps, drawings, stickers and so forth. This is sent to Cohen, who prints each cell - 150 copies each - with a Cyclostyle (now out of production). One copy is sent to the author, as well as to the other participants. New editions are published every 8 to 10 days. As of January 2012, there have been 813 issues.
Cohen described the origin of the project's name in 1985:
"Well, I’ll title my work “Brain Cell”, because the structure of a brain through a microscope looks like the diagram of the Mail Art network. Thousands of Neurons clung and piled up together are just like the Mail Art network, I believe."
Brain Cell is an art experiment in the vein of networked mail art, where a network expands from A, copied, forwarded and even returned to the originator. This produces a series of cybernetic cells, which can interact in a non-linear order. Brain Cell has enlisted over 6,000 contributors from 80 nations since 1985.
Famous quotes containing the words brain and/or cell:
“Each outcry of the hunted hare
A fibre from the brain does tear.”
—William Blake (1757–1827)
“each in the cell of himself is almost convinced of his freedom,”
—W.H. (Wystan Hugh)