US scholar awarded $1 million Bergguen Prize for philosophy

LOS ANGELES (AP) — U.S. philosopher and scholar Martha Nussbaum is the winner of this year’s $1 million Berggruen Prize for philosophy and culture.

The award was announced Tuesday by the Los Angeles-based Berggruen Institute, which hailed Nussbaum’s work as transcending academia in helping a nation and world to understand and overcome divisiveness.

Nussbaum, author of more than 20 books, frequently examines emotions and the role they play in moral and political judgments.

Her most recent work, “The Monarchy of Fear,” ascribes much of the nation’s current divisiveness to a politics of blame and fear.

The Berggruen Prize was established in 2016 by philanthropist Nicolas Berggruen to honor those who have “profoundly shaped human self-understanding and advancement.”

Nussbaum, who teaches law and ethics at the University of Chicago, is the first American recipient.

apnews.com


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