People

Jacques Delors

Jacques Delors

Founding President, Notre Europe – Jacques Delors Institute

Biography

Jacques Delors was President of the European Commission from 1985 to 1995. He had previously been Minister of Finance in France. In October 1996, Jacques Delors founded the research institute Notre Europe and is today its founding President. In May 2000, he was appointed President of the CERC (Conseil de l’emploi, des revenus et de la cohésion sociale) until July 2009.

Jacques Delors started his career at the Banque de France in 1945. He worked there until 1962, and was a member of the Economic and Social Council. He became Head of the Social Affairs Department of the General Planning Committee until 1969 before being appointed General Secretary for Permanent Training and Social Promotion (1969-1973).

He was a member of Prime Minister Jacques Chaban-Delmas’s cabinet (1969-1972), then Associate Professor at the University of Paris-Dauphine (1974-1979) and Director of the research centre ‘Work and Society’. He was elected as a Member of the European Parliament in 1979 and chaired the Economic and Monetary Affairs Committee until May 1981. From May 1981 to July 1984, he was Minister of Economics and Finance. He was elected Mayor of Clichy (1983-1984). From 1992 to 1996, he chaired UNESCO’s International Commission on Education for the 21st century.

He has been awarded the title of Docteur Honoris Causa by 24 universities and won various prizes and distinctions: Prix Jean Monnet (1988), Prix Louis Weiss (1989), Prix Prince des Asturies (1989), Prix Charlemagne (1992), Prix Carlos V (1995), Prix Erasme(1997), Prix de l’économie mondiale (2006). He received the Nijmegen Medal of Peace in the Netherlands on March 2010.”

Delors was previously a member of the Council for the Future of Europe and The WorldPost Advisory Council.

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