Convergence – Submission Form

 

con·​ver·​gence | \ kən-ˈvər-jən(t)s \ : Two or more things coming together, joining together or evolving into one.

Welcome to Convergence, an online system for submitting your upcoming ideas in action: articles, books, exhibitions, podcasts, talks and events, individual poems or artworks—for our new Convergence portal at Berggruen.org and for communicating your work via the Institute’s communications and public relations vehicles and their traditional and social media channels.

Let’s get started by having you tell us more about what you’re working on and if you’d like for us to consider it in our schedule in the coming weeks, months, or year ahead. And, if you have any ideas for cross collaboration—further convergence—you’ll see there is an area for your suggestions!

It is an intelligent form, so you’ll be guided with supplementary questions along the way where you can upload artwork, graphics, text and any notes or questions you may have. It will also allow you to add a variety of activities. Once you’ve submitted, the information will immediately be routed to the Communications Team (Website, Social Media, PR & Media Relations) for review and consideration and you will receive a confirmation that the material has been received and is being reviewed.

We appreciate advance notice and encourage a one-month lead time, if possible, to ensure that we can work into our calendar and plan appropriately. Either way, we encourage you to submit, submit, submit!

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