ARI SHAPIRO, HOST:
These days bringing a dead musician back to life, or at least making something that sounds like that musician's songs, can be as straightforward as typing prompts into an AI system. With that in mind, a group of Australian artists and scientists have extended the artistic output of one deceased American composer in a different way. They rebuilt some of his brain. NPR's Chloe Veltman reports.
CHLOE VELTMAN, BYLINE: The composer Alvin Lucier was known for experimental works that explored the physical properties of sound. He strapped sensors to his forehead to transform his own brain waves into a piece for percussion instruments and mined the resonance of everyday objects like pencils.
(SOUNDBITE OF PENCILS BANGING ON METAL)
VELTMAN: Lucier died in 2021 at the age of 90, but the composer, or rather a surrogate created out of biological matter taken from his body with his permission before he died, is now putting out new music.
(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)
VELTMAN: Lucier's posthumous composition comes from a new installation at The Art Gallery of Western Australia in Perth called "Revivification." Artist Nathan Thompson is one of its creators.
NATHAN THOMPSON: We have developed a brain on a dish, more or less, that has the ability to take action in the real world.
VELTMAN: This brain on a dish takes the form of two small white blobs on a pedestal at the gallery. The blobs are a cluster of neurons that mimic in a very basic way the structure and development of a human brain. Thompson says it was grown out of stem cells created from blood samples the composer agreed to donate to the project the year before he died.
THOMPSON: He was aware of possibilities that the work would perform for him even after his death.
VELTMAN: A video about the "Revivification" installation describes how the blobs, aka Alvin Lucier's surrogate self, make new music.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
UNIDENTIFIED NARRATOR: Surrounding this are 20 handcrafted brass plates. Each plate...
VELTMAN: These plates are attached to the walls like paintings. Also connected to the brain matter, they respond to its neural signals in real time with sound.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
UNIDENTIFIED NARRATOR: "Revivification" proposes a provocative vision of artistic immortality and speculates that Lucier's creative essence persists beyond death.
INDRE VISKONTAS: Creativity has two components.
VELTMAN: Indre Viskontas is a cognitive neuroscientist at the University of San Francisco who studies creativity.
VISKONTAS: One is the originality or the novelty or the uniqueness of the piece. And here, of course, that's in spades.
VELTMAN: But Viskontas says the blobs lack the other component that would make them capable of the creativity needed to truly make new art - intention.
VISKONTAS: Creativity really has to have a conscious element to it, and I don't think this particular piece of art is conscious. Those cells have no intention.
VELTMAN: Yet, she says even though this block of cells doesn't capture Lucier's creative essence, it's powerful because the composer was a partner in the creation of the piece. Chloe Veltman, NPR News.
(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC) Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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