Artificial “mini-brain” made from blood cells of composer Alvin Lucier is making music – four years after his death

An artificial brain made using blood cells from composer Alvin Lucier is making posthumous music, four years after his passing.

The American composer was the first artist to use brainwaves to generate live sound in his famous piece, Music for Solo Performer, back in 1965. Lucier was known for his experimental compositions, also notably the sound art piece, I Am Sitting In A Room. He died in 2021.

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In 2020, Lucier gave his permission to a team of scientists and artists to carry out the project, and agreed to donate his blood. Called Revivification, it was created by artists Nathan Thompson, Guy Ben-Ary, and Matt Gingold, alongside neuroscientist Stuart Hodgetts, as per The Guardian.

For the project, Lucier’s white blood cells were reprogrammed into stem cells and transformed into cerebral organoids, described as “clusters of neurons that mimic the human brain”. The artificial mini-brain is now on display in the Art Gallery of Western Australia, where a raised plinth hosts a magnifying lens showing “two white blobs” which form the lab-grown brain, as it composes “a posthumous score in real time”.

As outlined on the art gallery’s website, the walls of the exhibition are lined with 20 large, curved brass plates that are both sculptural and the source of the immersive sound environment. Each of the plates is directly connected to the neural activity of the brain organoid. “As the ‘in-vitro brain’s” signals pulse through transducers and actuators, they strike the brass, creating complex, sustained resonances that fill the space with sound”, the gallery explains.

Artist Ben-Ary says the team involved are “very interested to know whether the organoid is going to change or learn over time”. As for the ethical and philosophical questions raised by the project, the team say Revivification “is art first and science second”.

“Where does creativity lie?” Thompson tells The Guardian. “As cultural workers, we are really interested in these big questions. But this work is not giving the answers. Instead we want to invite conversations … Can creativity exist outside of the human body? And is it even ethical to do so?”

You can find out more about Revivification via the Art Gallery of Western Australia.

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