This American Composer's Brain Is Still Making Music Years After His Death. Here's How (And It's Not AI)

This American Composer's Brain Is Still Making Music Years After His Death. Here's How (And It's Not AI)

For artists, every page written, scene painted, or song composed can build a legacy, keeping them from sliding into obscurity. These works can influence future generations of creators, and AI can mimic their style, but ultimately death serves as a hard stop for creating new art. However, for one American composer, the grave has not stopped his brain from making music. Using tissue from deceased composer Alvin Lucier, scientists created a brain-like structure that can make new music.

As an experimental composer, Lucier had long sought out new and unusual ways to create music. In 1965, he became the first to produce live music using nothing but brainwaves captured by electrodes attached to his head. He followed this work, "Music for Solo Performer," in 1997 with a piece of music made using ordinary household objects like pencils titled "Opera with Objects."

Lucier died at the age of 90, but not before providing a sample of his blood to a team of artists and scientists that he had been working with since 2018. Their project, known as Revivification, sought to find ways for the comp...