Here’s How We Can Use Blockchain to Beat Inequality

Nicolas Berggruen

One of the biggest tech stories of 2017 was the explosion of public awareness about cryptocurrencies, fueled by rocketing prices for two of the leading cryptocurrencies, Bitcoin and Ethereum. Many pixels continue to be spent speculating about whether these prices are a bubble, whether their rise heralds the disruption of traditional state-backed currencies or whether the real driver of demand is the need to provide liquidity for black markets.

But the frenzy around Bitcoin obscures the fact that blockchain, the technology underpinning cryptocurrencies, is a much more general-purpose technology, one that holds the potential to revolutionize far more than just currency markets. The revolutionary potential of blockchain lies in its ability to securely inventory, track, subdivide and transfer wealth over the Internet. In a nutshell, what the Internet was to social media — the core enabling technology — blockchain is to the possibility of a true sharing economy.

Continue reading at The WorldPost.


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