The first phase took the form of a visual generative system derived from human pluripotent stem cells (HPSCs). This phase of the project sought a digital remodelling of the morphometric trans-formations executed through the differentiation processes within the stem cell via detecting the kinetic and morphological changes during a neuronal differentiation induced under a microscope.The identity-free digital environment (bits-based cell) is paralleled to the stem cell as the identity-free biological environment (genes-based cell); the first phase, therefore, showed how the identity-free digital environment simulated cellular behavior during the differentiation process and acquired its digital identity in parallel with the processes of biological identity-making in stem cells.

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Non-invasive Arduino-based sensors and ‘CMOS Camera’ were attached with a microscope ‘Confocal Microscopy from Olympus’. The thermal sensors were connected to a custom-made open-source software that was used to write a Java-based program that can provide a real-time translation and categorize the stem cell internal activities through its differentiation processes into differentiated colors as follows:

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– R (red lines) = high-activity areas
– G (green lines) = moderate-activity areas
– B (blue lines) = low-activity areas
– M (magenta lines) = a level of speed between R and G or G and B

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Over 7 days spent differentiating stem cells, the cultured cells were kept under a microscope at the beginning, middle and end of every passage13period and were provided with the required feeding through seven passages until the cells reached the maximum confluence14. The custom-made program worked as a motion detector that translated the cellular behavior during those 7days into specific coloured pixels in particular positions on a digital space to create general activity maps of the stem cell differentiation processes in each passage in the form of encoded frames. In this way, the remodelled biological differentiation processes visually provided a parallel artificial constitution in which pixels behaved as cells. Hence, this series of frames not only seeks an imagined stem cell-based environment but also mainly investigates an empirical methodology that provides an artificial stem cell-based open source as an unlimited approach to rebuild an artificial visual cellular world.