Most People Leave Behind to Will or A Family Recipe. ALVIN LUCIER LEFT BEHIND INSTRUCTIONS TO REGROW HIS BRAIN AND LET IT KEEP MAKING MUSIC.
Inside Dimly Lit Gallery in Reth, Metallic Clangs Echo Through the Room Like Morse Code, Yet No Musicians Are present – Just 20 Golden Brass Plates, Network of Wires and A Small, Pale Mass of Living Brain Tissue Pulsing With Electric Activity.
IT’s Not Science Fiction. It’s “Revivification,” An ambition Collaboration that has literally Bought on Piece of A Composer Back from the Dead.
Four Years After His Death, Lucier Is, In A Sense, Still Composing. His Living Remains, a Cluster of Brain Matter Grown from His Own Reprogrammed Blood Cells, are suspended to Central Plinth, feeding off the sounds of the room and generating haunting, improvised composits in real time.
Foundation for contemporary arts
The Installation is the Brainchild of Artists Nathan Thompson, Guy Ben-Ary, Matt Gingold and Neuroscientist Stuart Hodgetts, Who Connected Through a Now-Defunct Science Research Laboratory, According to The Art Newspaper. They Began Collaboating with Lucier in 2018, Captivated by His Trailblazing Use of Brainwaves in 1965’s “Music for Solo Performa,” Which Turned Neurological Activity Active into Live Sound.
That Same Fascination With Internal Impulse Now Fuels “Revivification,” Only This Time, Lucier’s Mind is no longer metaphorically in the music. It is the music.
“The Central Question We Want People To Ask Is: ‘Could A Filament of Memory Survive This Transformation?'” The Team Said in A Statement. “Can Lucier’s Creative Essence Persist Beyond Death?”
The “In-Vitro Brain” was Develop Using Lucier’s White Blood Cells, Which Were Donated Before Prior to Hi 2021 Death and Ultimately Transformed Into Stem Cells at Harvard Medical School. The Cells Were The Cultivated Into Neural Clusters Mimicking A Developing Brain and Embedded On A Mesh of Electrodes. The Setup Captures The Organism’s Spontaneous Electrical Impacts and Converts Them into Signals That Activate Transduers and Mallets Behind the Brass Plates.
EACH NEURAL SPARK IS RENEND INTO SOUND, AND THOSE SOUNTS BOCK BACK INTO THE BRAIN VIA MICROPHONES, CLOSING A FEEDback LOOP THAT ALLOWS LUCIER’S SYNTHETIC BRAIN TO LISTEN AND REACT. As Gallery Visitors Move and Speak, Their Committee Is Woven into the Performance Like Unknowing Collaborators in A Living Score.
The Team Hopes their work continues to Evolve. Future plans include adapting the installation for extreme Environments Like Antarctica, or Even Space. But for Now, Lucier’s Last Concert Plays on in a Gallery in Perth, A Strang and Stirring Performance From A Musician Who Mind Refuses To Go Silent.
