In Australia, an extraordinary art project called “Revivification” allows experimental composer Alvin Lucier, who passed away in 2021, to continue making music with a laboratory-grown brain derived from his DNA.

In a new art project named “Revivification” in Australia, a brain grown in a laboratory using the DNA of the late American experimental composer Alvin Lucier is producing music in real-time. ART, SCIENCE, AND PHILOSOPHY CONVERGENCE

The project, described by a team of artists and a neuroscientist as an effort to shed light on the dark yet thought-provoking possibilities of “transcending an individual’s existence beyond the certainty of death.”

At the heart of the work is an “in-vitro brain” obtained from blood samples donated by Lucier while he was alive. This mini-brain, grown on a plane attached to electrodes, is connected to 20 large brass plates in the gallery. SOUND GENERATED BY THE BRAIN’S ELECTRICAL SIGNALS

Visitors experience a live sound experiment where the electrical signals emitted by this brain activate hammers that strike each brass plate. This creative setup presents a new form of producing music with brain waves. Additionally, the brain transforms sounds captured by microphones in the gallery into electrical signals, responding to the external world. EXISTING THROUGH “MUSIC AFTER DEATH”

Lucier’s voluntary participation in this project is remarkable. He was one of the first artists to use brain waves to create music. Even shortly before his death, he arranged his music to play indefinitely. Artist Guy Ben-Ary mentioned that Lucier’s daughter laughed when she heard about the project, saying, “It’s just what you would expect from my dad.” CAN A TRACE OF MEMORY EXIST WITHOUT CONSCIOUSNESS?

This mini-brain developed at Harvard Medical School was created with stem cells derived from Lucier’s leukocytes. The research team transformed these cells into “cerebral organoids” resembling developing human brains. Although devoid of consciousness, the structure interacting with its surroundings and being made from Lucier’s biological material raises the question of whether “creativity can transcend death.”

According to artist Nathan Thompson, visitors looking at the core of the project are “crossing a threshold” and observing “something unlike themselves but alive.”