Alvin Lucier''s "brain" is still composing music 3 years after his death.
I love the gag from Futurama where, when people die, their heads and brains are kept alive in a jar, allowed to carry on forever. Their body may have failed, but in a sense they can live on and on and on (as long as someone's there to lug them around). It's a fascinating idea, and one that's definitely being explored in various ways here in the real world.
For example, did you know that you can upload photos, videos, and audio clips of a deceased loved one and create an incredibly lifelike AI version of them? This may or may not be considered a good thing depending on how you view it, and though it's not true consciousness per se, it can be a frighteningly accurate blurring of the lines. Furthermore, some scientists insist that consciousness does not exist solely in the brain, and that one day we may be able to harness it when the living organs of the body have died. Heavy stuff!
Maybe one day our heads will be able to live on in a jar!Giphy
A composer who passed away several years ago was also fascinated by the idea of his consciousness and art living on without him. So he devised a bizarre experiment.
The musician, composer Alvin Lucier, was not content to only make music for the duration of his natural lifetime. So he recruited a team from Harvard Medical School to harvest his stem cells after he passed away
From there, the stem cells were used to grow something resembling a clump of human brain matter. It's not a fully functioning brain, not even close, but it is living tissue derived from the DNA of the late musician. The experiment, then, was to determine just how much of Lucier really existed in this sample.
Alvin Lucier passed away in 2021 at the age of 90By Non Event - Alvin Lucier, CC BY-SA 2.0
"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, per the Art Newspaper.
Neuroscientists and artists teamed up to create an installation — part art, part science — called "Revivification." They connected the "in-vitro brain" to electrodes that would then transmit the electrical impulses generation by the brain matter to twenty humongous brass plates hung around, thus creating music. Or, at least, tones.
You can see the art installation and the behind the scenes in this video. If you want to hear the haunting tones that seem to originate from beyond the grave, you can get a listen at about 3:53.
- YouTubewww.youtube.com
Not only does the "organoid" generate signals that become sound through the brass panels, it also responds to the environment around it. Sound from the art gallery is captured by a microphone and fed back to the little mini-brain, which affects its electrode activity.
That makes the sounds generated inside the experiment totally unique and dynamic. If Lucier really "composing" this music, in a sense? Not really, but the bizarre sounds are being generated, in part, by his genetic material. That makes Revivification an absolutely fascinating blend of art, science, and maybe even a little spiritualism.
Revivification is probably not proof of consciousness after death, and it doesn't claim to be. But it asks interesting questions about the nature of memory, and where our creativity or spirit or soul or whatever you want to call it is really stored.
Perhaps the most touching aspect of the story is Lucier's unwillingness to ever stop creating new art, even after his death at the age of 90. You'd think that would be enough years to fully satisfy his need for self-expression! But not so.
When Lucien's daughter was told about the project, she laughed and said, "This is so my dad. Just before he died he arranged for himself to play for ever. He just can't go. He needs to keep playing."