People

Ricardo Lagos

Ricardo Lagos

Former President of Chile (2000 - 2006); United Nations Special Envoy on Climate Change

Biography

Mr. Ricardo Lagos President of Chile between 2000 and 2006. Prior to becoming president , Mr. Lagos held position within the government asMinister of Education (1990) and Minister of Public Works (1994).

During the 80’s he led the Democratic Alliance and the Independent Committee for Free Elections. He was the founder and first president of the Party for the Democracy.

Lawyer & Phd in Economics at Duke University, he has also received the Honoris Causa from a large number of prestigious universities in the world, such as the Universidad Autónoma de México, Universidad de Salamanca, amongst many others. He was granted the “Berkeley Medal”, top distinction of the Berkeley University in California.

Former President of the Club de Madrid. Lagos was one of the United Nations’ Special Envoy on Climate Change. He is also President of the Fundación Democracia y Desarrollo in Chile and teaches at Brown University (United States), amongst others.

Lagos was born on March 2, 1938. He is married and has 5 children and 7 grandchildren.

Lagos was previously a member of the 21st Century 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