Positive Nationalism: New Models for the US-China Relationship — The Conversation Starts Here with Nicolas Berggruen

October 21, 2019

6pm — Asia Society | Southern California – Los Angeles, CA

Asia Society Southern California, in partnership with the Berggruen Institute, is pleased to host a discussion with Nicolas Berggruen. As a thought leader on the U.S.-China relationship and author of his latest book with Nathan Gardels, Renovating Democracy: Governing in the Age of Globalization and Digital Capitalism, Berggruen offers positive nationalism as a new approach to strategically manage the tensions between the U.S. and China through global cooperation on climate change and reciprocal trade agreements. Join Nicolas Berggruen and Asia Society Southern California Chairman Dick Drobnick for a thought-provoking conversation.

Click here to register.

Nicolas Berggruen serves as the founding Chairman of the Berggruen Institute, Co-Publisher of The World Post, and Chairman of Berggruen Holdings, the investment vehicle of the Nicolas Berggruen Charitable Trust. A strategic thinker and shaper of the future, he created the Berggruen Institute in 2010 by convening with academic, business, and political leaders to focus on addressing the great transformations in the world by integrating the study of human sciences with the pursuit of improving practical governing practices. A disruptive innovator, Berggruen has impacted the paradigms we use to envision the future by founding the 21st Century Council, the Council for the Future of Europe, and the Think Long Committee for California. A visionary thought leader, Berggruen is the co-author of Renovating Democracy: Governing in the Age of Globalization and Digital Capitalism and Intelligent Governance for the 21st Century, a Financial Times Book of the Year.

Please email Li Huang if any questions, lhuang@asiasociety.org , or call 213.788.4711.

Monday, October 21
6:00 p.m. – Registration & Reception
6:30 to 8:00 p.m. – Program

OUE U.S. Bank Tower
633 West 5th Street
Los Angeles, CA 90071

Check in at the lobby security desk. Program is on the 8th floor.

Parking: flat rate $8 at Westlawn Garage, 544 S Flower Street.

Early Bird Rate: ASSC members: $15; General Admission: $25
Special Rate: $100 to become a member of ASSC and attend for free ($50 saving)

To buy the book in advance, 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