BRAIN MATTER OF INCREDIBLE MUSICIAN CONTINUES TO MAKE MUSIC AFTER HIS PASSING
What if death served as the impetus for a new form of art rather than the end of human creativity? In partnership with the late American composer Alvin Lucier, Revivification is an eerie and immersive installation that explores the transitional realm between this life and the next. Raw emotion and speculative science combine to produce a work that challenges us to consider not only the boundaries of creativity but also whether it should be allowed to go that far.
According to the Art Gallery of Western Australia, the immersive installation Revivification has been "four years in the making." Artists Nathan Thompson, Matt Gingold, and Guy Ben-Ary worked with neuroscientist Stuart Hodgetts and Lucier to develop the idea.
Lucier was one of the most well-known experimental composers of his era, and his works were renowned for using physics to create music. He frequently approached music-making in an inquisitive and lighthearted manner; his 1969 composition "I Am Sitting in a Room," in which he recorded a passage on the same cassette and read it aloud several times, is a particularly noteworthy example.
Lucier did this again and again until it was almost impossible to hear his remark above the noise. Three years before he died in 2021, in 2018, Lucier started collaborating with the scientists and artists on this project. The composer, who never shied away from a challenge, gave the group his blood. To create organoid structures that are intended to simulate and resemble a developing human brain, white blood cells from this sample were first "reprogrammed into stem cells."
These brain organoids are in charge of Revivification, both literally and figuratively. The organoids, which are situated in an incubator in the middle of the installation area, stand in for Lucier's "in-vitro brain," which exists outside of his physical and deceased body. Then, electrical impulses from this brain tissue cause mallets to strike 20 brass plates that are fixed to the installation area regularly.
The end effect is an eerie experience that makes us reflect more deeply on the production of art both during and after our lives. Indre Viskontas, a cognitive neuroscientist at the University of San Francisco, has one way of putting it.
In an interview with NPR, she said, “Creativity really has to have a conscious element to it. I don’t think this particular piece of art is conscious. Those cells have no intention.”
Like the echoes of Lucier's compositions, revitalisation hangs in this ambiguity rather than providing a simple solution or escape route. The installation forces us to consider issues of agency, authorship, and legacy by animating traces of a life that has already been lived. Does Revivification's music represent a resurrection, an extension of Lucier's work, or something entirely fresh and unique?