Action With Vision

March 5, 2020

3:15pm — Delphi – Greece

THE STATUS OF LIBERAL DEMOCRACY IN THE ERA OF AUTHORITARIAN POWERS

The increase of the economic influence of illiberal democracies, as well as, authoritarian powers, challenges the international post-war order. 30 years after the Fukuyama’s End of History, liberal democracy faces a significant competitor, elected but completely illiberal governments with significant economic and military power. Will this provide a plausible alternative to liberal democracy, for the first time after the end of the Cold War? Will authoritarian capitalism act as the normative counter-force to liberal democracy in the 21st century?

Programming Partner: Athens Democracy Forum

• Sonja Puntscher-Riekman, Professor & Director, Salzburg Centre of EU Studies, University of Salzburg

• Nathan Gardels, Co-Founder, Berggruen Institute, USA

• Karolina Wigura, Member of the Board, Kultura Liberalna Foundation, Poland

• Angelos Chryssogelos, Associate Fellow, Europe Programme, Chatham House

Chair: Matina Stevis-Gridneff, Brussels Correspondent, The New York Times

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