Council for the Future of Europe Meets in Brussels on the Topic of Fiscal Discipline and Public Investment

On December 10, 2014, the Council for the Future of Europe of the Berggruen Institute and the Friends of Europe, co-hosted a seminar in Brussels on the topic of Fiscal Discipline and Public Investment.

Among the speakers and participants of the seminar was Jörg Asmussen, State Secretary, Ministry of Labour, Germany; Mateusz Szczurek, Minister of Finance, Poland; Benoit Coeuré, Executive Board, European Central Bank; and Marcel Fratzscher, President DIW, Berlin, among many others.

The group considered options for adapting the fiscal constraints imposed on national governments by the EU rules in order to encourage public investment that will stimulate growth. While the recently introduced plan by the new President of the EU Commission, Jean-Claude Juncker concentrates on promoting investment at the EU level, national-level investment will also be needed if Europe is to reverse its economic stagnation.

The seminar is the first in a series of activities that the Council for the Future of Europe will engage in on this topic. The concept paper – which was written to stimulate the discussion – was drafted by the Chairman of the Council, Mario Monti and senior advisor, Sylvie Goulard, and can be found here. Over the coming months, the ideas will be further developed through engagement of various leaders and other stakeholders. In addition, a follow up seminar and a public event are planned for later this year.

For the agenda and discussion summary notes, please click here.

 

composed by Arswain
machine learning consultation by Anna Tskhovrebov
commissioned by the Berggruen Institute
premiered at the Bradbury Building
downtown Los Angeles
april 22, 2022

Human perception of what sounds “beautiful” is necessarily biased and exclusive. If we are to truly expand our hearing apparatus, and thus our notion of beauty, we must not only shed preconceived sonic associations but also invite creative participation from beings non-human and non-living. We must also begin to cede creative control away from ourselves and toward such beings by encouraging them to exercise their own standards of beauty and collaborate with each other.

Movement I: Alarm Call
‘Alarm Call’ is a long-form composition and sound collage that juxtaposes, combines, and manipulates alarm calls from various human, non-human, and non-living beings. Evolutionary biologists understand the alarm call to be an altruistic behavior between species, who, by warning others of danger, place themselves by instinct in a broader system of belonging. The piece poses the question: how might we hear better to broaden and enhance our sense of belonging in the universe? Might we behave more altruistically if we better heed the calls of – and call out to – non-human beings?

Using granular synthesis, biofeedback, and algorithmic modulation, I fold the human alarm call – the siren – into non-human alarm calls, generating novel “inter-being” sonic collaborations with increasing sophistication and complexity. 

Movement II: A.I.-Truism
A synthesizer piece co-written with an AI in the style of Vangelis’s Blade Runner score, to pay homage to the space of the Bradbury Building.

Movement III: Alarmism
A machine learning model “learns” A.I.Truism and recreates Alarm Call, generating an original fusion of the two.

Movement IV: A.I. Call
A machine learning model “learns” Alarm Call and recreates A.I.Truism, generating an original fusion of the two.

RAVE (IRCAM 2021) https://github.com/acids-ircam/RAVE