Avant-garde composer Alvin Lucier died in 2021 but is now creating new compositions through a surrogate performer.
What does it mean to relocate creativity outside of the body?
Alvin Lucier was a pioneer in sound art, contributing to the sonification of the electroencephalogram (EEG) – the transformation of data into sound.
He was the first to use an EEG headset to record his neural activity and create the brainwave composition, Music for Solo Performer (1965).
Connected through SymbioticA, a team of artists, Guy Ben-Ary, Nathan Thompson and Matt Gingold; and neuroscientist, Stuart Hodgetts; have created a remarkable exhibition to immortalise the late composer through biological agency.
This is Revivification, open from April 5 to August 3 at The Art Gallery of Western Australia, a historic first-of-its-kind performance using the in-vitro (external) brain of the late Mr Lucier.
HOW?
Artist Guy Ben-Ary has spent over 25 years pushing boundaries in biological arts.
He says Mr Lucier was the first in performance art who “drew attention to cognitive labour” and “offered an insight of how composition is being generated in the composer’s brain.”
He and the Revivification team virtually connected with Mr Lucier in 2018 after Mr Lucier expressed excitement about a previous work called CellF, but the physical realisation of Revivification occurred in 2020 when Mr Lucier donated his blood to the project.
Mr Lucier’s white blood cells were reprogrammed into stem cells at Harvard Medical School.
Through a process called Induced Pluripotent Stem Cell (IPSC) technology, those stem cells were then transformed into cerebral organoids: three-dimensional structures resembling a developing human brain.
The installation sees “life sustaining technologies” at “the heart” of the exhibition (image 3) which keep the organoid alive, along with brass plates which make sound through their connection to the neural activity of the organoid.
“We do refer to Revivification as a surrogate performer, which is a performer that has the capacity to perform but is linked to the human donor through this biological agency,” Mr Ben-Ary says.
Many questions arise from Revivification and Mr Ben-Ary says that is why they are there.
“We are not here to provide answers.”
Guy Ben-Ary
In a world overcome by artificial intelligence, the installation asks audiences to ponder in-vitro intelligence and the possibilities of this surrogate performer to adapt and learn.
Revivification asks what is the “potential for intelligence to emerge from biological matter, […] could the cellular memory survive the transformation process?”
And can it retain some of the biological inheritance from the donor?
THE ETHICS BEHIND IT ALL
Revivification uses biological material of someone who has died, which brings ethics into consideration.
Dr Tim Dean, Philosopher in Residence at The Ethics Centre, describes Revivification as “quite an unusual case.”
“But,” he says, “general principles have been put into place to “ensure that people’s biological material is used ethically”.
“Usually, it is considered that the main ethical bar to clear is that there is informed consent on behalf of the donor.”
Dr Tim Dean
“That means that they need to not just agree to give up their biological material, but they need to understand what it is going to be used for, who is going to use it, whether somebody might be able to benefit or profit.”
In 1951, an era before the concept of informed consent, Henrietta Lacks, a young black woman from Baltimore, was diagnosed with cervical cancer and a sample of her tumour was taken without her consent while she was being treated.
Her “immortal” cancer cells, later named “HeLa” cells, have since been used in research and have been vital in understanding human health and disease, but Ms Lacks’ family did not benefit from the use of her cells like the rest of the world.
In the case of Revivification, Mr Ben-Ary said the ethics were simple since Alvin Lucier consented to his biological material being used for the project, and the team remain in contact with Lucier’s estate and family.
Dr Dean raises ethical concerns with the creation of an organoid like Lucier’s, as creating an “almost living thing” differs from using a sample of someone’s blood, cells or DNA.
He suggests if the organoid responds to stimulus and develops a sense of “primitive sentience,” we might then have “obligations to consider the welfare of [it].”
“Ethics is hard enough when we are dealing with living beings, it is even harder when we are dealing with the biological material sampled from a dead person that is now been turned into a pseudo-living organoid.”
ALVIN LUCIER’S FUTURE
The Revivification team now want to find an organisation to take on the exhibition permanently.
This way, “Alvin can keep on composing, keep on telling new stories and keep on creating new memories at the gallery,” Mr Ben-Ary says.
