People

Laura Jeon

Laura Jeon

President of the Korean American Federation of Los Angeles (KAFLA)

Biography

Dr. Laura Jeon is currently the 34th term President of the Korean American Federation of Los Angeles (KAFLA). She was elected to KAFLA’s top post by the community in 2016. Previously, she served as KAFLA’s 33rd President and Executive Vice President. Laura was an adjunct faculty member at the USC Sol Price School of Public Policy. She also served as Chief Executive Officer of the Korean Health, Education, Information & Research Center (KHEIR) for 13 years. She has worked tirelessly in her career to be a voice for the Korean American community and has dedicated her life to enriching the quality of life for the Korean American and diverse communities. Laura served as a commissioner on the California State Department of Health Services Domestic Violence Advisory Council and as a commissioner for the City of Los Angeles Department of Aging. She has held numerous leadership positions and chaired multiple Korean American councils and committees. Laura’s vision for KAFLA includes bridging the generational gap between 1st and 2nd generation Korean Americans and building bridges with neighboring communities in order to be impactful. She has worked her entire life to empower the Korean American community and wants to continue working with elected representatives at all levels to garner support for the Korean American community in Los Angeles County and throughout the state. Laura is a graduate of the University of California, Berkeley and received her Ph.D. from the University of Southern California.

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