Amy Gutmann

Amy Gutmann

United States Ambassador to Germany

Biography

Dr. Amy Gutmann, a former jury member for the annual Berggruen Prize, is President and Christopher H. Browne Distinguished Professor of Political Science and Professor of Communication at the University of Pennsylvania. As president of the University of Pennsylvania since 2004, she is widely recognized for her transformative leadership. Her vision, Penn Compact 2022, commits the university to increasing inclusion, integrating knowledge and innovation across disciplines, and making a profound impact locally, nationally, and globally through research, teaching, and service.

First in her family to graduate college, Dr. Gutmann has made access to a Penn education a top priority. She has more than doubled the number of students from low-income, middle-income, and first-generation college families at Penn, which is now the largest university in the U.S. offering all-grant financial aid that meets the full need of undergraduate students.

She has overseen the creation of a robust innovation ecosystem on a vibrantly expanded campus. This includes the 23-acre Pennovation Works and its flagship Pennovation Center business incubator and laboratory, which have helped Penn rank No. 4 on Reuters’ World’s Most Innovative Universities for the past three years.

Dr. Gutmann leads a globally preeminent research university and health care system attracting more than $1 billion in sponsored research annually, helping to make Penn Philadelphia’s largest private employer and No. 1 health care provider.

Global engagement has been a centerpiece of Dr. Gutmann’s presidency, highlighted by the creation of the Perry World House on campus, Penn Wharton China Center in Beijing, and the Penn Biden Center for Diplomacy and Global Engagement in Washington, D.C.  Each marks major university-wide initiatives designed to bring the world to Penn and Penn to the world.

Named one of the “World’s 50 Greatest Leaders” by Fortune magazine in 2018, Dr. Gutmann continues her pathbreaking scholarship as Penn’s president. Her 17th book, Everybody Wants to Go to Heaven but Nobody Wants to Die: Bioethics and the Transformation of Health Care in America, co-authored with Penn faculty member Jonathan D. Moreno, was published in 2019. A trailblazer who has held prominent national and international leadership positions, Dr. Gutmann served from 2009-17 as chair of the Presidential Commission for the Study of Bioethical Issues, as chair of the Association of American Universities from 2014-15, and is a member of the Global University Leaders Forum of the World Economic Forum.

Dr. Gutmann graduated from Radcliffe College of Harvard University. She earned her master’s degree from the London School of Economics and her doctorate from Harvard. Before her appointment at Penn, she was the Provost and the Laurance S. Rockefeller University Professor at Princeton University, where she also served as founding director of the University Center for Human Values, dean of the faculty, and senior adviser to the president.

Dr. Gutmann was previously a member of the Berggruen Institute’s Board of Directors.


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