People

Daniel Bell

Daniel Bell

Dean of the School of Political Science and Public Administration, Shandong University; Distinguished Chair Professor at Fudan University (Shanghai)

Biography

Daniel A. Bell（贝淡宁）is Dean of the School of Political Science and Public Administration at Shandong University (Qingdao) and Distinguished Chair Professor at Fudan University (Shanghai).

His books include Communitarianism and Its Critics (Oxford University Press, 1993) and The China Model (Princeton University Press, 2015), China’s New Confucianism (Princeton University Press, 2008), Beyond Liberal Democracy (Princeton University Press, 2007), East Meets West (Princeton University Press, 2000), and The Spirit of Cities (co-authored with Avner de-Shalit) (Princeton University Press, 2012). His latest book (co-authored with Wang Pei) Just Hierarchy: Why Social Hierarchies Matter in China and the Rest of the World was published by Princeton University Press in 2020.

He is the founding editor of the Princeton-China series (Princeton University Press) which translates and publishes original and influential academic works from China. His works have been translated into 23 languages. In 2018, he was awarded the Huilin Prize and was honored as a “Cultural Leader” by the World Economic Forum. In 2019 he was awarded the Special Book Award of China. 

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