"Music for Surrogate Performer" is a groundbreaking bioengineered musical entity that explores the preservation of a performer's legacy after death. Commissioned by the Venice Biennale in 2023, this work pays homage to and extends the legendary composer Alvin Lucier's historical piece "Music for Solo Performer" (1965) which used the composer's brainwaves to generate sound through resonant percussive instruments.
This innovative project stems from a collaboration that began in 2020 when the artists met Lucier. Lucier donated his blood, which was then transformed using biotechnology into living neural networks grown on specialized interfaces in a petri dish – Lucier's living 'In-Vitro Brain'. The artists then interfaced Lucier’s 'In-Vitro Brain' to the same resonant percussive instruments that he used in 1965, creating a living proxy for the late Lucier, allowing his cognitive essence to continue performing after his death.
This project, endorsed by Lucier before his passing in 2021 and supported by his estate, marks a world first: a deceased composer playing live after death through biological agency. It further deconstructs the concept of physicality in performance by completely removing the human performer.
Tickets at a presale price of 6,00 EUR can be purchased through the Entrio system. On the day of the performance they can be purchased at KONTEJNER for 9,00 EUR. Admission is free for persons with disabilities, those over 65 years of age and children under 16.
IMPRINT
Organization: KONTEJNER | bureau of contemporary art praxis
Curators: Olga Majcen Linn & Tereza Teklić | KONTEJNER
Technical realisation: Jakov Habjan, Filip Pacak
Design: kuna zlatica
PR and communication: Inesa Antić
Thanks to: Dr. Oliver Vugrek, Ruđer Bošković Institute, Srđan Čaldarović, Ivana Kuljerić, Igor Lešnik, Academy of Music, University of Zagreb.
The performance at KONTEJNER has been realised within the framework of the EU project Future DiverCities.
The performance in KONTEJNER was co-funded by CITS (Departments of Creative Industries, tourism and sports) Western Australia.
Guy Ben-Ary (AU)
Guy Ben-Ary is a Perth based artist and researcher. He currently works at SymbioticA, an artistic laboratory dedicated to the research, learning and hands-on engagement with the life sciences, which is located within the University of Western Australia. Recognised internationally as a major artist and innovator working across science and media arts, Guy specialises in biotechnological artwork, which aims to enrich our understanding of what it means to be alive. Guy’s work has been shown across the globe at prestigious venues and festivals from the Beijing National Art Museum to San Paulo Biennale to the Moscow Biennale. His work can also be seen in the permanent collection of the Museum of Modern Art in New York. His work Bricolage won an award of excellence in the Japan media art festival, cellF & Silent Barrage were awarded an Honorary Mention in Prix Ars Electronica (2017, 2009) and Silent Barrage also won first prize at VIDA, a significant international competition for Art and Artificial Life.
guybenary.com
Nathan Thompson (AU)
Nathan Thompson is a multi-disciplinary artist exploring the possibilities of man/machine interaction and the hidden corners that arise from this relationship. Mostly he implements machine/robots that play along the blurred edge of the interactive while showing independent thought, only slightly tethered to the audiences’ actions. His work often questions the role of humans in the natural landscape and through these investigations, builds a greater understanding of our inhabited space. His machines are self-built, analogue and lifelike in their behaviour, using custom electronic Neural- type networks that are on their own, very simple but when piggybacked, multiplied and fed back into the stream, display behaviour remarkably organic. The interpretations of this evolving machine language lead to an installation unique to every setting… the participant, oftentimes, both controls and is controlled by the mechanics of these unique lifelike constructions.
Stuart Hodgetts (AU)
Stuart Hodgetts is Director of the Spinal Cord Repair Laboratory at the School of Human Sciences at UWA and Perron Institute for Neurological and Translational Science. His research focuses on developing pre-clinical therapies and strategies to repair the injured spinal cord and uses a range of innovative approaches to understand and assess treatment strategies including individual and combinatorial treatments including stem cell transplantation, gene therapy, in vivo reprogramming, tissue engineering, and immunomodulation, as well as non-invasive therapies such as infra-red/near infra-red implantable devices and repetitive transcranial magnetic stimulation. Since 1998 he has collaborated with national and international bio-artists, as well as being an Honorary member and avid collaborator, adviser and scientific consultant for the internationally renowned Art & Science Collaborative Research Laboratory Symbiotica.
