People

Yuk Hui

Yuk Hui

Philosopher, 2021-2023 Berggruen Fellow

Biography

Yuk Hui currently teaches at the City University of Hong Kong. He did his Ph.D. thesis at Goldsmiths College in London, postdoctoral studies in France, and Habilitation thesis in Germany, and since 2012 he has taught at the Leuphana University and Bauhaus University in Germany. Hui’s research focus is on philosophy of technology and he has published in periodicals such as Research in Phenomenology, Metaphilosophy, Angelaki, Theory Culture and Society. He is the initiator of the Research Network for Philosophy and Technology, and author of On the Existence of Digital Objects (University of Minnesota Press, 2016), The Question Concerning Technology in China. An Essay in Cosmotechnics (Urbanomic/MIT 2016/2019), Recursivity and Contingency (R&L 2019) and Art and Cosmotechnics (University of Minnesota Press, Nov 2020).

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