People

Rebecca Newberger Goldstein

Rebecca Newberger Goldstein

Professor of Philosophy at New College of the Humanities, London

Biography

Rebecca Newberger Goldstein is the author of ten books, of both fiction and philosophy. Her novels include The Mind-Body Problem, Properties of Light: A Novel of Love, Betrayal and Quantum Physics , and 36 Arguments for The Existence of God: A Work of Fiction . She is also the author of Incompleteness: The Proof and Paradox of Kurt Gödel , named by Discover Magazine one of the best science books of its year, and the award-winning Betraying Spinoza: The Renegade Jew Who Gave Us Modernity . Her latest book is Plato at The Googleplex: Why Philosophy Won’t Go Away , published this past spring. The recipient of numerous awards for both her fiction and scholarship, in 1996 she was awarded a MacArthur Fellowship, popularly known as the “Genius” Prize. She has also been named the Humanist of the Year by the American Humanist Association, and been elected into the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. She is Professor of Philosophy at New College of the Humanities, London UK.

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