You couldn't just stand and stare at Adam Brown and Andrew Fagg's "Bion" even if you really wanted to.

The 1,000 glowing bions just won't have it. Mimicking an inquisitive child, the individualized plastic computers, networked like a jellyfish of sensors and striking blue glowing eyes, respond to humans with an eerie silence then, depending on the viewer's response, chirp an electronic song.

"Just like how you respond to other people, if someone is standoffish or happy, that's how the bions will react," said Brown, an assistant professor of art at the University of Oklahoma.

The concept of a bion makes reference to an individual element of primordial biological energy identified as an "orgone" by the Austrian scientist Wilhelm Reich, according to a release by Brown and Fagg.

Though intensive computer programming and a grant from the National Science Foundation played a role in the project's development, both Brown and Fagg, an associate computer science professor, view the elaborate web of bions and 3,000 miles of wire as "blurring the lines between art and science."

"This is a true collaboration. I had an idea of how I wanted to see, but I didn't have the knowledge or the background to do it," said Brown. "I'm very interested in restructuring the model of art, science and research. I think the current models need to be erased and we need to start fresh."

The resulting project, he said, "provides a framework to explore the inter-relationships that dwell in between art, psuedoscience, philosophy and robotics" and "is responsive to not only the scientific, computer science community, but also something that responds to the art community."

This week, the professors jaunted to Long Island University's Hillwood Art Museum in New York to display the bions as part of the "Archival to Contemporary: Six Decades of the Sculptors Guild" exhibit.

After the exhibit ends in April, Brown said he anticipates sending the project for display around the world.

Not happy with just a single collaborative project, Brown and Fagg partnered this semester to teach a cross-listed course named sm[ART] Spaces, which is intended to bring together students from the Fred Jones Jr. College of Art and the College of Engineering.

"We're going to make a major impact at this university," Brown said. "This hasn't been done before not because the students can't collaborate, but because they haven't had the opportunity to do it."

Check out a video of "Bion" at isisconceptuallaboratory.com.

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For further inquiries contact Stephanie Callaway.

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