People

Janet Clayton

Janet Clayton

Senior Vice President, Corporate Communications, Edison International

Biography

Janet Clayton is senior vice president of corporate communications for Edison International and Southern California Edison. She leads internal and external communications, corporate and brand positioning, and philanthropic programs. Prior to joining Edison International, Clayton was president of ThinkCure, a community-based nonprofit that raises funds for cancer research and is the official charity of the Los Angeles Dodgers. Prior to ThinkCure, Clayton had a distinguished career at the Los Angeles Times as a key member of its leadership team. She represented the largest news organization in the West during live television presidential and gubernatorial debates and public affairs news programs on CNN and MSNBC. She held numerous positions, including editor of the editorial pages, where she determined the Times’ official opinions on local, state, national and international issues. Clayton has received many accolades for excellence in her profession, including recognition as the editor of two Pulitzer Prize-winning series, one on chronic homelessness in Los Angeles and one on the dysfunctions of California state government. She is a member of Phi Beta Kappa and holds a bachelor’s degree in journalism from the University of Southern California.

Clayton was previously a member of the LA Committee.

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