Berggruen Prize 2019 Videos

Amy Gutmann – Berggruen Prize Jury Member and President of the University of Pennsylvania – on how Justice Ginsburg epitomizes the true spirit of the Berggruen Prize for Philosophy & Culture in being broader than academic philosophy.

Please click on the images below to watch the video.

Berggruen Prize Jury Chair Kwame Anthony Appiah shares the jury's process in selecting the winner each year.
Berggruen Prize Jury member Amy Gutmann on the significance of this year's winner.
Berggruen Prize Jury member David Chalmers on selection Berggruen Prize winners.
Berggruen Prize Jury member Wang Hui says that it is important to expand the field of philosophy and learn from different cultures, traditions and ways of thinking.
Berggruen Prize Jury Chair Kwame Anthony Appiah on what makes the Berggruen Prize so meaningful.

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