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The composer still making music four years after his death – thanks to an artificial brain

In Western Australia, a team of artists and scientists have resurrected the US composer. It raises a storm of questions about AI and authorship – and it’s also incredibly beautiful

Lucier’s stem cells, which were used to grow an artificial brain: ‘We’re very interested to know whether the organoid is going to change or learn over time’Both sculptural and sonic, the installation features 20 large parabolic brass plates which curve out from the walls like golden satellite dishes. Hidden behind each plate is a transducer (like a speaker) and a mallet, which respond to neural signals from the mini-brain – filling the space with a kind of breathless, disembodied soundtrack. Microphones in the gallery pick up ambient noise, including human voices and the resonant tones of the plates, and that audio data is converted into electrical signals and fed back into the brain.

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