Alvin Lucier Revivification art music

Photo Credit: The Art Gallery of Western Australia

A groundbreaking intersection of art, science, and music is now on display at the Art Gallery of Western Australia (AGWA) in Perth. The Revivification installation enables a ‘mini-brain’ developed from American experimental composer Alvin Lucier’s blood to compose and trigger musical scores in real time.

Created by artists Guy Ben-Ary, Nathan Thompson, Matt Gingold, and neuroscientist Stuart Hodgetts of the University of Western Australia (UWA), Revivification began with Lucier’s voluntary blood donation the year before he died in 2021. Those blood cells were reprogrammed into stem cells at Harvard Medical School and transformed into cerebral organoids—three-dimensional cell structures that mimic a developing human brain. Encased in an incubator, Lucier’s “in-vitro brain” sits at the heart of the art installation.

Surrounding the organoid are 20 curved brass plates lining the gallery walls. Electric signals from the organoid are transmitted through transducers and actuators, causing mallets to strike these plates and generate sound. This effect is both musical and unpredictable, leaving visitors to experience compositions shaped by living neural activity rather than pre-recorded tracks or artificial intelligence.

During the exhibition, microphones capture the ambient noise of the gallery and feed it back into the organoids, creating a feedback loop that blurs the boundary between participant, the composer, and the final work. The AGWA exhibition asks visitors to consider difficult questions on their visit. “Could there be a filament of memory that persists through this biological transformation? Can Lucier’s creative essence persist beyond his death?”

“What we’ve created isn’t preservation or simulation, but a form of ‘postmortem play’ where Lucier’s biological material creates in unpredictable ways,” the team told The Art Newspaper. “At a time when generative AI is calling into question human agency, this project explores the challenges of locating creativity and artistic originality. Like many things that are important to us, it’s an impossible concept to measure. Perhaps its value cannot be judged by scientific protocols, yet it remains something that we as humans should place great value in.”

Lucier was intimately involved in conceptualizing the work before his death, especially in the themes he explored throughout his career—audio resonance and reflection. The Revivification art installation was created with his full knowledge and consent; his donation of biological material was a conscious choice to participate in what’s being called a ‘posthumous celebration’ of his work. The installation opened on April 5 and will close on August 3, 2025.