Revivification is a 400-page essay collection built around one of the most unsettling art projects of recent years: an attempt to immortalise avant-garde composer Alvin Lucier through lab-grown brain organoids that compose music in a closed-loop system.
About This Book
When artists Guy Ben-Ary, Nathan Thompson, Matt Gingold, and scientist Stuart Hodgetts cultivated organoids from Alvin Lucier's donated blood and placed them within a responsive sonic environment, they raised questions that no single discipline could answer alone. This volume gathers 10 essays and artist reflections to map the philosophical, ethical, and scientific territory the project opens up. At stake are fundamental questions about human agency, in-vitro life, mortality, and what it means to create — questions made newly urgent by the rise of generative AI. Written for readers willing to sit with genuine difficulty, Revivification draws together art, biology, and philosophy without resolving their tensions.
Key Features
- 400 pages of essays and artist reflections spanning art theory, bioethics, and philosophy of mind
- Contributors: Guy Ben-Ary, Nathan Thompson, Matt Gingold, Stuart Hodgetts, and Emma Pegrum
- Published by Mess Books
What You'll Discover
- How the Revivification project uses organoids — mini brain structures derived from Alvin Lucier's blood — as both artistic medium and philosophical provocation
- The specific ethical terrain of in-vitro life: what obligations, if any, arise when biological material is kept active and responsive outside a living body
- How the project positions itself within contemporary debates about generative AI and the diminishing boundaries of human creative agency
- Ten distinct perspectives — across art, science, and cultural criticism — on what it means to be human when corporeal and cognitive capacities can be replicated, extended, or outsourced
About the Author
Guy Ben-Ary is one of the lead artists behind the Revivification project, working alongside Nathan Thompson, Matt Gingold, and scientist Stuart Hodgetts. Emma Pegrum also contributes to the publication. [Details available upon request]
Specifications
- Format: Paperback
- Pages: 400
- Dimensions: 12.5 × 19 cm
- Language: English
- ISBN: 9780645586091
- Publisher: Mess Books
- Publication Date: [Details available upon request]
Perfect For: Artists, bioethicists, philosophers, and researchers working at the intersection of art, biology, and technology — and anyone grappling seriously with what generative AI and biotechnology mean for human creativity and identity.