An assessment of György Ligeti's intersecting identities in the context of cosmopolitanism and the history of modernist music.

Machine learning techniques have revolutionized the field of financial engineering by providing accurate and efficient methods for pricing American options. This research project aims to explore the effectiveness of deep learning algorithms in accurately pricing American options. The project is divided into two schemes: Scheme I employs a sequence of neural networks, while Scheme II utilizes a single aggregate neural network to eliminate time discretization. By testing various combinations of neural network hyperparameters in both schemes, we seek to optimize the accuracy and computational speed for pricing nine different Put and Call options. Our results are compared against existing efficient algorithms, such as polynomial regression and random forest, as documented in [5]. Based on the analysis of optimal hyperparameters that enhance the accuracy of machine learning-based American option pricing, we identify the top five solvers (hyperparameter sets) in Scheme I and the top two solvers in Scheme II. These solvers are benchmarked and reproducible, serving as reference points for future comparisons with prior studies.

Mauro Lanza and composer-technologist Andrea Valle’s cycle Systema Naturae (2013- 17) combines acoustic instruments with computer-controlled mechanical sound objects. The first work of the cycle, Regnum animale, surrounds a string trio with a circle of computer-driven, electro-mechanical devices, whimsical creations that offer a second life to discarded consumer electronics such as hair dryers and electric knives. Every performance of Regnum animale will be different, as the jerry-rigged mechanical objects necessarily break down or malfunction, as part of an instrumentarium in a state of constant becoming. Regnum animale thus represents a paradoxical combination of ideals. The composers demand extreme rigor from themselves and their performers. Yet both composer and performer blend their efforts with the the contingent sounds and rhythmic qualities of found and discarded consumer objects. Lanza recomposed five of the Regnum animale for orchestra as the basis for Anatra digeritrice (Piccola Wunderkammer di automi oziosi) (2014), inspired by the Eighteenth-century inventor Jacques de Vaucanson’s duck automaton Le Canard Digérateur (1739). Although the recomposition imparts a certain a sense of depth and grandeur to its source, Anatra remains, in Lanza’s words, «a little collection […] of precision-made mechanisms that move about pointlessly». Lanza’s The Kempelen Machine from 2015 celebrates Wolfgang von Kempelen’s speaking machine developed at the end of the 18th century by orchestrating the results of a humanmechanical voice hybrid. 1