A Musician's Brain Matter Is Still Making Music Three Years After His Death (popularmechanics.com)
(Friday April 18, 2025 @11:30PM (BeauHD)
from the life-after-death dept.)
- Reference: 0177062491
- News link: https://entertainment.slashdot.org/story/25/04/18/2128209/a-musicians-brain-matter-is-still-making-music-three-years-after-his-death
- Source link: https://www.popularmechanics.com/technology/robots/a64490277/brain-matter-music/
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, [1]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 [2]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.
[1] https://www.popularmechanics.com/technology/robots/a64490277/brain-matter-music/
[2] https://www.theartnewspaper.com/2025/03/27/brain-of-late-composer-lives-on-in-show-at-the-art-gallery-of-western-australia
> 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, [1]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 [2]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.
[1] https://www.popularmechanics.com/technology/robots/a64490277/brain-matter-music/
[2] https://www.theartnewspaper.com/2025/03/27/brain-of-late-composer-lives-on-in-show-at-the-art-gallery-of-western-australia
AI Hallucination detected in the summary title. (Score:2)
From the details right in the summary, they did not generate music from "a musician's brain matter." They grew NEW brain matter from his white blood cells. This new brain did not have any of the training or experience as the musician's actual brain. It was a totally different (and much tinier) brain!