Introducing the Global Fellowship Program

Understanding different cultures and ways of life depends on extended exposure to other societies. To this end, the Center will sponsor a unique fellowship program that will give thinkers the opportunity to study, work and live at leading universities in China, the United States, and the United Kingdom initially, including, Harvard University’s (School of Divinity), Stanford University’s Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences (CASBS), UCLA, NYU, University of Cambridge, Tsinghua University and Peking University. These efforts will result in symposia, video and written materials including articles and books.

The initial topics the fellows will focus on include:

  • The Future of Political Governance: Democracy and Meritocracy
  • The autonomous self and relational self
  • Harmony and Freedom
  • Equality and Hierarchy
  • Humans and Technology
  • Sustainable Innovation


Berggruen Philosophy and Culture Center Fellows

The inaugural cohort of eight Berggruen Fellow are:

  1. Roger Ames (Manoa, Hawai’i) – Professor of philosophy and editor of “Philosophy East & West” at University of Hawai‘i at Manoa;
  2. Stephen Angle – Professor of Philosophy and Chair of Wesleyan University’s new College of East Asian Studies;
  3. Rajeev Bhargava – Director of the Institute of Indian Thought at the Centre for the Study of Developing Societies (CSDS) IN DELHI;
  4. Yi-Huah Jiang – Former Premier of the Republic of China.;
  5. Chenyang Li – Associate Professor of Philosophy at Nanyang Technological University, Singapore, where he founded and directs the Philosophy program;
  6. Jin Li (Providence, Rhode Island)– Professor of Education and Human Development at Brown University;
  7. Anna Sun – Associate Professor of Sociology and Asian Studies at Kenyon College;
  8. David Wong – Susan Fox Beischer and George D. Beischer Professor of Philosophy at Duke University.

Stay tuned for more.

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