People

Mario Monti

Mario Monti

President, Bocconi University

Biography

Mario Monti is an Italian economist who served as the Prime Minister of Italy from 2011 to 2013. In 2013 he was named Chairman of the Council for the Future of Europe.

He is currently president of Bocconi University, Milan. He is also European chairman of the Trilateral Commission and honorary president of Bruegel, the European think-tank he launched in 2005.

He is the author of the report to the President of the European Commission on “A new strategy for the single market” (May 2010).

As the EU-appointed coordinator for the electricity interconnection between France and Spain, he brokered an agreement between the two heads of governments in June 2008. He was a member of the Attali Committee on French economic growth, set up by President Sarkozy (2007-2008).

He was for ten years a member of the European Commission, in charge of the Internal market, Financial services and Tax policy (1995-1999), then of Competition (1999-2004). In addition to a number of high-profile cases (e.g. GE/Honeywell, Microsoft, the German Landesbanken), he introduced radical modernization reforms of EU antitrust and merger control and led, with the US authorities, the creation of the International Competition Network (ICN).

Born in Varese, Italy, in 1943, he graduated from Bocconi University and did graduate studies at Yale University. Prior to joining the European Commission, he had been professor of economics and rector at Bocconi.

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

Articles

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