Four years after his death, composer Alvin Lucier is producing new music.

Inside a gallery in Perth, Western Australia, a clump of Lucier’s brain cells—grown in a lab and suspended on a 64-electrode mesh—fires bursts of electrical activity. Those signals trigger mechanical mallets, which strike brass plates and other resonant surfaces, filling the room with sound.

The installation is called Revivification. It was created by artists Guy Ben-Ary, Matt Gingold, and Nathan Thompson, in collaboration with neuroscientist Stuart Hodgetts. But its origin began long before: in 2020, just a year before his passing, Lucier donated blood samples to be used in the creation of a cerebral organoid—an in vitro mini-brain with no capacity for thought or memory.

It has no consciousness. But it listens. And it plays back.

“Alvin was always pushing the boundary between body, brain, and sound,” said Ben-Ary in an interview with The Guardian. “He understood what this project could be. He gave us his cells willingly.”

Lucier was a pioneer in experimental music, known for turning scientific processes into art. In Music for Solo Performer (1965), he used EEG brainwaves to activate percussion instruments. I Am Sitting in a Room (1969), perhaps his most famous work, allowed echoes and room resonance to shape the piece over time. Revivification feels like an echo of both—only this time, without him.

Or perhaps with him, in a way we don’t yet understand.

The organoid receives ambient sound from microphones placed in the gallery. That input feeds into its neural circuits. The electrical patterns it sends back are captured, translated, and performed. It is, in effect, a closed feedback loop—one that learns, adjusts, and evolves over time.

“There’s a sense of presence in the room,” said curator Rachel Ciesla. “People walk in, and they feel something. It’s not rational, but it’s undeniable.”

But not everyone is convinced this is simply art. As cerebral organoid research grows more sophisticated, so do the ethical questions. Can we still call this tissue “non-sentient” when it’s responding to stimuli and influencing its environment? Does consent extend beyond death? Should we begin to regulate the afterlife of biology?

“This kind of work lives in a legal and ethical grey zone,” said Hodgetts. “The organoid can’t think. But it reacts. We’re watching a new frontier unfold—and we don’t yet have the language for it.”

Still, what emerges from Revivification is not dystopian, but strangely moving. There’s no melody, no score. Just sound shaped by matter that once belonged to a man who believed deeply in listening.

Lucier is gone. But something in the gallery hears, and answers.