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Title: A Musician's Brain Matter Is Still Making Music Three Years After His
Death

Link: https://entertainment.slashdot.org/story/25/0...

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Popular Mechanics: American composer
Alvin Lucier was well-known for his experimental works that tested the
boundaries of music and art. A longtime professor at Wesleyan University
(before retiring in 2011), Alvin passed away in 2021 at the age of 90.
However, that wasn't the end of his lifelong musical odyssey. Earlier this
month, at the Art Gallery of Western Australia, a new art installation titled
Revivification used Lucier's "brain matter" -- hooked up to an electrode mesh
connected to twenty large brass plates -- to create electrical signals that
triggered a mallet to strike the varying plates, creating a kind of post-
mortem musical piece. Conceptualized in collaboration with Lucier himself
before his death, the artists solicited the help of researchers from Harvard
Medical School, who grew a mini-brain from Lucier's white blood cells. The
team created stem cells from these white blood cells, and due to their
pluripotency, the cells developed into cerebral organoids somewhat similar to
developing human brains. "At a time when generative AI is calling into
question human agency, this project explores the challenges of locating
creativity and artistic originality," the team behind Revivification told The
Art Newspaper. "Revivification is an attempt to shine light on the sometimes
dark possibilities of extending a person's presence beyond the seemed
finality of death." "The central question we want people to ask is: could
there be a filament of memory that persists through this biological
transformation? Can Lucier's creative essence persist beyond his death?" the
team said.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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