art

the art of making sausages

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a nation hungryan economy to plan and a lot of propaganda to do. Coming across images today of the assortment of sausages that, at least in theory, were available in grocery stores for the Soviet people during the post-war years is a visual spectacle, something that runs counter to all our preconceived ideas about what should be on those starving family tables and also a carousel of alchemical challenges as we see more and more elaborate and exotic sausages. Pure modern art mass produced in the Soviet Union (you will find a wide variety of examples at the end of the post). Account the YouTube popularizer of Russian origin My Name Is Andong that everything took off thanks to trip to Chicago by Anastas Mikoyánthen a senior member of the Politburo, in 1936. He lived there for three months, when the countries were still experiencing an idyllic period of cooperation, and with his stay he not only took down recipes for a lot of products that would later drive his people crazy on their return home, such as ice cream, ketchup or hamburgers, but he learned how factories and companies there were applying innovations produced by the second industrial revolution. Among them, they discovered that extensive livestock farming and the acceleration of processes could help the use of animal waste for its reconversion into sausages, which were stored much longer. The Sausage Doctor. The desired one. All this led to two elements of our interest, the first, the Recipe Album of the People’s Commissariat of the Food Industry of the USSR for the companies of the People’s Commissariat of the Food Industry “Sausages and Smoked Foods”, where production standards were established that no one could ignore for each type of sausage and which gave rise to this beautiful variety of dozens of meat buns. We are pleased to introduce Doctor Sausage And second, the order was given for the production of a lot of new products, of which we are going to highlight one and only one, the Doktorskaya kolbasa, Doktorskaya kolbasa or Doctor Sausage. He was on the verge of calling himself Doctor Stalin because they were so proud of the discovery, but someone thought that it wouldn’t be such a good idea in the long run to associate the leader of the Party with a meat flute. The Doctor Sausage was a natural recipe, without additives, with a very high proportion of beef and pork (60% of its weight) to be talking about a combat product and with the rest of the additives being easily found. It was cooked, it had to be soft to feed from children to adults, low in fat for those with stomach problems, and its nutritional composition would help to remove the most impoverished classes of famine, as well as allowing them access to meat. A good protein for everything, which is why the State spent good money promoting its sausage with the desire that it reach every table. To say it was a success would be an understatement. The divulger’s mother, who did spend her life, childhood included, in the USSR, remembers it. He tells how chopped was not for every day, but the day it was bought was a party. Kolbasa sandwiches They were the favorites of the workers in the street vendors’ stalls. Salchipapas, kolbasa with fried eggskobalsa in the Olivier salad (precursor of what we know as Russian salad)… The old woman fondly remembers what they called the “doctor’s tear”, that the mortadella, if you squeezed it, made it a little greasy. It was juicy. Doctor Sausage is the Proustian madeleine of an entire former Soviet generation, almost a symbol of pride, since, no matter how much variety they had in the capitalist bloc, the poor here also had delicious little luxuries, such as demonstrate posts like thiswhere those nostalgic for the regime instrumentalize these sausages as an example of communal prosperity. If you wanted, you could replicate the original recipe at home. following these steps. What happened? That when things started to go wrong, and despite the institutional vacuum of messages confirming this trend, people knew that they would lose thanks to these sausages. “In the 60s, in the mid-60s… From then on the Doctor stopped being the same. He was no longer good,” recalls the octogenarian. Memory may take a small toll on women here, since the industry did not change the production standard until 1974. The bad harvests of the late 70s caused a decrease in the number of cattle, the kolbasa began to disappear from the stores and people cried, so the State allowed it to be manufactured again under formulas of lower meat purity. The result was a progressive loss of quality until its citizens ended up turning their backs on those sausages that no longer had anything to do with the gastronomic triumph of what they did not know was the golden age of the regime. For posterity, the memory of its flavor and the propaganda images of a political project that found ways to get its chest out even from its guts. In Xataka | In 1970 the USSR secretly developed kryptonite for nuclear warheads: now it sounds like a general rehearsal is imminent In Xataka | In 1950 two scientists wondered if a 10 gigaton nuclear bomb was possible. 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It is also one of the largest art collections in the world

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We are used to finding Juan Roig’s fortune in the lists of richest people in Spain. However, it is not so common to find his wife, Hortensia Herrero, on this type of list, who, as a partner and vice president of the main Spanish supermarket chainalso treasures an important heritage, not so much in economic value (that too) but in its artistic value. Specifically, Herrero has been included in the list of 200 biggest collectors internationally according to the prestigious magazine ARTnews. The role of Juan Roig’s wife as a patron of art was not well known despite the fact that she has been investing in works of art of great artistic value for more than a decade. The magazine highlights her status as “a prominent Spanish patron and philanthropist, married to Juan Roig, known for her commitment to the conservation of Valencian cultural heritage.” The beginning of a great passion. Hortensia Herrero has been intensely dedicated to art collecting since 2013. As and how does it count Herrero herself, her interest in art arose after a visit to Dallas to the opening of the exhibition “Sorolla and America” ​​where she met its curator, Javier Molins. It was at that moment when he decided to dedicate time and resources to this hobby, which over the years became a true passion supervised by Molins, who has served as a mentor and expert consultant. Since then, his dedication has been constant, visiting exhibitions and searching for the best works for his collection, which has allowed him to build a high-level selection recognized internationally. Your own art gallery. Since 2023, the co-owner of Mercadona manages the Hortensia Herrero Art Center (CAHH) in Valencia, which is a national reference. The exhibition center is located in the historic Valeriola Palace in Valencia, currently offers 3,500 square meters dedicated to contemporary art and houses more than 100 works by nearly 50 recognized artists, both national and international. “Who was going to tell me that this love of painting, which began at the age of 14, would end up becoming a passion that has led to the construction of this art center, now offered for Valencians and visitors to enjoy,” said the patron. on the web from the center. The project involved an investment of more than 40 million euros and has had the objective of bringing contemporary art closer to Valencians and visitors, stimulating dialogue between historical heritage and modernity. This commitment has allowed him to share a position on the list of the largest collectors of ARTnews alongside world figures such as Bernard Arnault, François Pinault, Jeff Bezos or investors Larry Fink (BlackRock) and Kenneth Griffin. It’s not just “love of art.” Beyond artistic interest, art continues to be one of the most profitable investments for great fortunes. This is confirmed in the report “The Wealth Report” prepared by the consulting firm Knight Frank. During 2023, the price of works of art worldwide increased by 11%, while luxury items such as jewelry rose by 8% and watches by 5%. On the contrary, collector cars fell 6% in their valuation. In the long term, art has experienced a cumulative growth of 105% in the last decade. These data reveal not only the taste and passion of great collectors like Herrero, but also the financial strategy that art represents among the main international investors. In Xataka | Who are the biggest millionaires in Spain: the list of the ten richest people in the country Image | Wikimedia Commons (Jlafuentesanchez)

A Chinese artist is turning the least artistic thing into art

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It hasn’t rained this much since that video of Will Smith eating spaghetti appeared online. However, within a few years technology has evolved tremendously. Taking other people’s content as inspiration, you can now create videos with absurd fidelity. The funniest thing is that, If AI “steals”there is an artist “stealing” which makes the AI-generated videos appear to be AI-generated videos. And it’s delirious. Tianran Mu is a Chinese actor and content creator who, at the age of 29, asked himself how he could create content inspired by what AI does. take a look to the video which we leave below in which you can see Tianran Mu -the one with the noodles- and another person. Exactly, there are clumsy movements, misplaced facial expressions and inconsistencies galore that we associate with failures and hallucinations of artificial intelligence generative, and it is where the 29-year-old creator has seen an opportunity to create a series of videos taking advantage of these gaps in technology. 40 years of forgiveness Recently, Wired He was able to chat with Tianran Mu. At 29 years old, he spent some time looking for work in the film industry, specifically at the huge Hengdian World Studios, but there was no luck. In 2019, he started creating ‘sketches’ on Chinese social networks and things went well for him. After experimenting with content creation using AI, began to detect those patterns in which technology fails. For example, unnatural body gestures, erratic glances, plots that turn somersaults or elements that overlap and, in 2024, it began to release short videos imitating this which means that, luckily, we can still know if a video is AI or not. And it’s… fun. In some videos, he uses different actors to play the same role, emulating the continuity problems that AI often has. The characters are also not looking anywhere and feel like robots. The impact is there. In Chinese networksit seems that the young man has hit hard, but it was a few weeks ago when part of his content began to be shared on Western networks such as X or Instagram, accumulating more than 10 million views and thousands of reactions on platforms where he is not present. The phenomenon has viralized in a very organic way at a time when there is an intense debate around these AI creations. That debate has intensified with the Sora 2 releasethe OpenAI model that has evolved tremendously compared to the tools we had until now and that makes really difficult to guess if certain videos are AI or not. It is something that has already had its share of controversy, of course. content theft to train the modelbut Mu saw an opportunity in Sora 2. He identified that the human characters generated by Sora laugh in unpleasant ways and have hair with strange “physics.” So, he imitated it in a video he released a few days ago: It’s curious because being 100% artisanal and human, Mu’s video is more uncanny valley than some videos made with AI. I think this speaks very well of his work, but also of the dark side of Sora 2. In fact, the actor himself confessed to Wired that It has been much more difficult for him to parody Sora 2 because the quality has gone up several notches. In fact, he comments that it is almost impossible to create parodies and states that in a few months “there will be nothing left to imitate. If I try to act as the AI ​​will, I would only be acting like a human.” And this is really sad. Yes, it is having enormous virality, but that does not pay the mortgage and Mu says that, in two years, many directors and actors will use AI to replace not only the special effects departments, but the actors themselves. And, as an actor, he confesses that if it is already difficult to compete against other actors, it will be more difficult to do so against those who do not even exist, but who can potentially act like a human, bending to whatever the studios want. You don’t have to go in two years. It is true that thanks to this virality, in China he has had some contracts with companies that want him to use AI for campaigns, but he affirms that, in his own content, everything he does is human because his goal is… well, to be hired for his acting skills. Images | Tianran Mu In Xataka | YouTube is becoming much more important to Google than its video platform: in its search engine

He won an art contest with an image made with Midjourney. Now he is fighting in court to be recognized as an artist

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It seems like an eternity has passed, but in 2022, AI image generation tools were already achieving the most convincing results. And if not, tell the participants in the Colorado art contest, who saw how An image created with Midjourney took first prize in the ‘digital art’ category. The controversy was afoot: can we call something that an AI does art? Its author is very clear about this and has gone to court to defend it. What has happened? Jason Allen, the author of the image (or rather, the prompt), tried to register ‘Théâtre D’opéra Spatial’ a month after winning the contest, but was not allowed. According to the US Copyright Officethe image contains “more than a minimal amount of artificial intelligence-generated content.” Allen began a legal battle to get the image registered. According to what they say in 404medialast August they filed a request in court defending that it is a work of art and Allen an artist. The prompt. Although it was created by software, Allen states that the creation of the prompt is an artistic process in itself and therefore should be considered an artist. In the text presented to the court, his lawyers defend that “he created the image by providing hundreds of iterative text prompts (…) to help express his intellectual vision.” However, for the copyright office, just providing the instructions was not enough and they repeatedly rejected his request. Art or not. The news unleashed a wave of criticism on networks and brought to the table the debate of whether images generated with AI should be considered art. This controversy has polarized the artistic and technological community, creating two marked and opposing positions: on the one hand, those who They consider that it cannot be considered art because it lacks human intentionality, on the other hand those who defend that AI is one more tool with which the artist expresses himselfjust like a brush, a graphics tablet or a camera. It’s not the first time. Art has faced more debates like this and there is a very clear example. The same thing is happening with AI that happened with photography in the 19th century; was rejected by defenders of drawing and paintingwho saw their jobs threatened by new technology. More than a century later, photography is considered art and fills galleries and museums. And most importantly, the painting still exists. The intention. The debate arises when mechanical means come into play. In the case of photography it was the camera and with AI it is software, very complex but software nonetheless. If we accept that photography, digital illustration or 3D modeling are art, AI can be too. The key that makes the difference is the intention behind it. Setting any prompt and sticking with the first result that comes to mind is not the same as having a clear idea, a story to tell, a feeling to express, and looking for the result that captures it as best as possible. Of course, it would be fair that those works compete in their own category. The problem. AI has turned the art community against it from the beginning. Image generators, especially the first ones, were trained with countless works of art by authors who received nothing in return. Some authors they began to “poison” their works for AI to go crazy and there are several initiatives that artists can join to prevent your jobs from ending up training AI. Image | Jason Allen and Midjourney In Xataka | Either you pay or we will use your works to train AI: the threat of hackers to an artists’ website

Spanish elites have been practicing the noble art of endogamy 3200 years

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There was a copistería in front of the Faculty of Sciences that had hung on the wall, one after another, all the ons of one of the wildest engineering in the entire Spanish university system. I used to look at them while waiting. And I know it may seem boring, but there was nothing more fascinating than seeing how the people of the cloister were changing, but the surnames did not. Yes, yes. It is an exaggeration, an easy stereotype. But it is also true. And not only in college: Endogamy is one of those recurrent phenomena of the social life of our country. A long history. As They explained a few years ago Professor Javier Barnes and economist Fernando Faces, “that in Spain the rules of the game for the contests and awards of contracts are based on norms of a century and a half ago, of 1870, it gives us an idea of ​​how much we need to renew ourselves.” It is not a bug, it is a feature. It is a well -known anthropological technology to reinforce the power of a group of people. And that is why not only affects The municipalities, Companies or the university: endogamy came to provoke The extinction of the Habsburg Dynasty Branch. What we did not know is that it was something so old. When was innovamy invented? We do not know, but we are close to discovering it. After analyzing 24 buried individuals In the Zaragoza necropolis of the Castellets II, an international team of specialists has found a possible response to all this. And it is that up to two thirds of the individuals were related to each other. But there were not only parents and children, there were kinships of fifth and sixth grade. That means that Mequinenza’s mound was used as a mausoleum of an extensive family, as a kind of central funeral node of a dense filiation structure. It is the first direct evidence of inbreeding practices at the end of the era of bronze in the peninsular. What does this mean? That the peninsular of that time were discovering the most basic version of Endogamy: leaders who consolidate their status marrying each other. “Such levels of consanguinity had not registered in previous periods of the Iberian Prehistory,” The researchers say. The big change. Metals have always been metals. “Prehistory is the period of the history of humanity from our origins to the appearance of the first bureaucratic states,” Archaeologist Rodrigo Villalobos explained. And what we are seeing in Mequinenza is how these states begin to take shape. This allows us to know things about Endogamy, of course. Nothing new in ethnographic terms, but something key that affects us today. Endogamy is still alive because it is an extremely effective method to ensure the stability of social structures. It has associated costs, but They are long -term costs. In the medium term, they are usually more than assumable. But beyond: the interesting thing is that, like supports the investigationendogamic practices are practical sensitive “Legal systems and administrative practices”. It is not an irreformable curse. This leads us to a deeper question: do we really want to change it? Image | Meressa Chartrand In Xataka | 8,000 years ago, 3,000 before the invention of the first toilet, we already had intestinal parasites

Perplexity is perfecting an art: that of marking lanteroles

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Perplexity, a company that generates 150 million dollars a year, has offered 34,500 million to take Chrome, the Google browser, as reported The Wall Street Journal. How to see Wallapop trying to buy Inditex. Why is it important. This movement begins to be a pattern to Perplexitywhich has a very interesting and functional product that we liked from the beginningbut that also tends to abuse corporate theater. For example, camouflating marketing campaigns as impossible offers. The pattern. This is not the first time that Perplexity tries to buy the incomprable: Every few months, a new offer impossible. Each time, the same result: headlines, attention, relevance provided. The figures that do not fit. Google pays Apple 20,000 million annually Just for being the predetermined search engine in Safari. A single annual Google payment is worth more than perplexity as a company. Chrome has 3,000 million users. Perplexity has 30 million per month. The scale difference is an abyss. Dan Iives, from Wedbush, He estimates that Chrome is worth at least 50,000 millionso Perplexity not only offers money that does not have: it is undervalued the asset at 15,000 million. Yes, but. Perplexity promises to keep Google as a predetermined search engine in Chrome. They have baptized the operation as “PROJECT SOLOMON“—Salomon, the wise king – while they propose to spend a fortune to continue sending traffic to his competitor. It has a lot to do with running as unblockrs of a judicial mandate – the American justice raises force Google to get rid of Chrome– And also do it without damaging the competition. The elephant in Cupertino. The most persistent – and more calculated rumor is that Apple will buy perplexity. On June 20, in a single day, three coordinated stories appeared: Alex Kantrowitz suggesting that Apple should pay them 30,000 million. BlOomberg rEmporting Meta’s interest. And Mark Gurman confirming “internal conversations” In Apple. The coordination was obvious. But it worked. Suddenly, Perplexity was not one more startup of the pile but the most beautiful spring dance. Just when the greats that the generative one has caught them on foot changed They value cutting times buying some startup. Between the lines. Perplexity processes about 9,000 million annual consultations. Google processes 5 billion a year. The company does not have its own revolutionary technology. It is an interface on openai, anthropic and company models, with some Web Scraping on. Your product is powerful, but lives on other people’s pillars. And a month ago they launched their own browser, Comet. If it is so revolutionary, why do Chrome need? The question It is what a buyer would win, including Apple, buying perplexity. At the moment, your business model falls very short for the investment received. And although its product is good, it is not autonomous, it depends on the access of third -party APIS and the company seems focused on sending messages between lines for someone to buy. In Xataka | Pocket was the place where you saved articles you never read. The dopamine chute of social networks has killed it Outstanding image | Perplexity

Many times art is inexplicable, and a retiree from Malaga uses the most illogical tool to create it: Excel

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Explain what art is as complicated as sometimes get the weather forecast. Few things are more subjective and, while for many a banana is a simple fruit, for others it is a work that costs 6.2 million dollars. But within that subjectivity, reflecting reality in a painting is one of the most “accepted” ways to create art. What if that painting is done not with Photoshopbut in Microsoft Excel? That is precisely, with what Jesús Villanueva enjoys. No tutorials. “Normal,” you may think, since who would have occurred. Well let me tell you … it’s not so weird. We are going to see it throughout this pictorial trip with such a boring program (and useful) as Microsoft Excel. The program, which has almost 40 years behind himit was launched as a system of exclusive spreadsheets for Mac In 1985 and its bases have not changed: it is still a calculation program. However, each version became more powerful and versatile. In it Microsoft blog We found the story of Jesús Villanueva, 78, who entertains himself not playing ‘Skyrim‘, doing Streaming of ‘Leage of Legends‘ either Catching Pokémon: It entertains with Excel. He studied a construction eyeliner course and is what has been dedicated, but after retirement and pandemic of the COVID-19something changed Miguel Ángel del Excel. With free time (because you have to have it to create such works), Jesus began using Excel as canvas. “I never found a tutorial to explain how to do it. It has been trial after proof, drawing after drawing,” he says. He began recreating buildings in a format without perspective, but as he learned to master the tool, he went to more complex compositions. Image | Jesús Villanueva Image | Jesús Villanueva The most impressive thing is that it is not dedicated to borrowing external resources or hitting images, but to draw with colors directly in the grid, combining complex and simple shapes to give life to your idea. It is based on photographs, yes, but draw all forms manually in the application. Your secret? “Everything is a matter of patience, even in works that can take up to three months, such as the Siena cathedral.” Other religious buildings in its porpholio are the Mosque of Córdoba or the Cathedral of Florence, for which he had to draw the little characters large and then reduce their size to be able to embed them on the general image. The “Insert Forms” brush. That is the basic tool for Jesus. Choose a figure, calculate the proportions to case in a reference image and there begins to adapt, color and combine with others to give life to the object you want. When he has it, he unites it to the rest and the scene is formed. He also plays with vector strokes and the change of scale of elements. Image | Jesús Villanueva Japanese landscaping. In it Instagram of Jesus You can see his work, but he is not the only passionate of this particular brush. Tatsuo Horiuchi, an 84 -year -old Japanese man, also decided to unleash his particular vision of art when he retired. He says he took 10 years to create something that he felt that he could proudly teach people, but also that there were people who did not understand their hobby or that they laughed at it. “Why do you put so much effort on something that is not useful? Are you crazy?” “Well yes,” he replies in a video in which we can see part of his collection. Excel has a lot of life. Horiuchi gives a very important key. “I think, even if you don’t have talent for painting, you can paint something whenever you have Excel.” And this is interesting because there are people – as I – who are denied to paint even if he would like, and with a grid, it may be easier to start drawing. In any way, it is always curious to see that Excel is not just the tool in which Sustains the world economy and even formula 1 equipment: Excel too It can be a sport. And to gamify a tool as boring as it has all my respects. In Xataka | Thousands of people have been living from art for three years. Ireland pays them 1,300 euros per month to fulfill their dream

We always imagine Berber pirates as teachers of pillage, but their greatest art was another: negotiation

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Centuries ago Berber pirates They supposed a true headache for Spanish sailors, a threat to stalking from the coast of Tunisia, Tripoli or Algiers that could make an expedition end up the worst of the ways: with the prey crew, turned into captives of The privateers Or, worse, in slaves who sold to the highest bidder if no one paid their rescue. Today those pirates from North Africa and the Spanish negotiators who were dealing with them suppose something different For economists: a unique opportunity to study negotiation techniques. And they have already left us a few lessons. Learning thanks to pirates. It sounds strange, but that is what a group of economists from the universities of Duke, Harvard and Vienna was proposed for a while: learn from the negotiations between the Pirates of the Mediterranean and the emissaries in charge of paying for hostage rescues. For this they included data from thousands of captives arrested by the Berber more than three centuries, between 1575 and 1692. The result published it A few years ago in An article Signed by Attila Ambrus, Eric J. Chaney and Igor Salitskiy. But … why? For several reasons. The main one, because the researchers detected in those ‘strip and loosen with pirates an interesting example of negotiations with “Asymmetric information”that is, those in which one of the parts that seeks a deal manages more data than the other. After all, when the pirates arrested the passenger of a ship, they could not be certain of what their social status was, if it came from a family with more or less money or if there were people willing to pay a good sum in exchange for their freedom. “There was an asymmetry of substantial information between the Spaniards and the pirates,” The authors explain in his Paperin which they add that, among other issues, the privateers could not know if the delay of a rescue was due to the lack of interest in the hostage, a strategy to lower the price or simply the difficulties to move in pre -industrial Spain, in which the news could take days to arrive from Africa to the center of the peninsula. Uncertainty, the key. “Although the Algiers knew that the Spaniards preferred to rescue certain types of captives Aya could often identify the individuals of greater rank, there is evidence that they faced the uncertainty about what prisoners they wanted to rescue the Spaniards and how much they were willing to pay,” The researchers point out. In fact, they cite instructions from the time that they advised rescue teams to pretend disinterest in the hostages they wanted. To avoid this, the privateers encouraged captivity to identify each other. A not -so -old problem. The second reason why the analysis is interesting is because the problem of piracy and bailouts is not really so old. In Your article The researchers remember that between 1530 and 1780 the pirates captured and enslaved thousands of people and claim to have used records of 4,680 hostages rescued in 22 expeditions, but the reality is that The kidnappings And rescue follow the agenda in the 21st century, a reality that the authors also point out. Ambrus, Chaney E Salitskiy, for example, remember that the payment of bailouts has been an important source of income for terrorist groups such as ISIS or al Qaeda or that Somali pirates managed A political dilemma and Reason for controversy over the last years, with cases particularly sounded. And what have they discovered? After analyzing negotiations with Mediterranean pirates, experts reached an interesting conclusion: the rush is not good companions for those who want to pay bailouts … or directly those who pursue a most favorable possible agreement in a “asymmetric information” scenario. The reason? After analyzing data that include thousands of captives rescued from the claws of the Berber pirates between the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, the economists concluded that the delays in the negotiations cheated the payments. “We documented a solid negative relationship between delays in negotiation (measured by captivity time) and the prices of rescue,” They conclude The researchers add: “It should be noted that the results are probably more relevant to current rescue and negotiation situations, which are characterized by unilateral private information.” In fact they consider that the way of acting with the Berber privateers “can contribute ideas” to deal with modern Somali pirates. A percentage: 8%. The researchers even went further and concluded that a year increase in the captivity of the host about 8%. It is an even greater reduction than that can be associated with the prisoner’s own aging, which also influenced the bailouts. “Since the sources suggest that the pirates were concerned with preserving the value of the captives they expected to rescue, this suggests that most of the decrease in the price over time was due to the value of the delay.” Common sense … and something else. That most time relationship, less cost ‘may seem simple (even intuitive), but it is not so easy to establish it. The reason is that more factors come in play. For example, pirates could identify the captives of greater “value”, in exchange for those who requested higher amounts and those who were willing to embark on longer negotiations. In the case of prisoners with a lower “valuation”, with low rescue prices, the process would be faster. Another factor to keep in mind is that in preindustrial Spain, not all negotiations were extended for a strategic issue. Sometimes they did it simply because the news about the captivity took days or weeks to arrive from Algiers to the ports of Alicante, Cartagena or Valencia and from there to the peoples where the families of the hostages lived. That without the time had to raise the funds and move them, something that religious orders used to take care of. The importance of strategy. All these factors are relevant because they influence, among other issues, in the imbalance of information that captors and … Read more

Some millionaires decorate their mansions with works of art. Others hang a pagani zonda r evolution as if it were a picture

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There are different examples that illustrate that Having money is not always linked to have good taste for the decoration. There is nothing more than See the attic of the Trump tower where the current tenant of the White House lived. Excentricities apart, the most common is that the millionaires decorate the walls of their mansions and luxury floors With works of art of incalculable value. However, not all these works of art have left the brushes of consecrated artists. In this case, the work of art that have “hung from the wall” is a Pagani Zonda R Evolution of limited edition valued of more than 2.2 million of dollars. Passion for pagani and speed The Argentine expiloto Pablo Pérez Companc is known, in addition to his sports career, for his fondness for supercar. That hobby has led him to gather an important cars collection high -end. Pérez did not settle for park your cars in the garage or expose them in showcases. According to The published by ADPérez decided that his Pagani Zonda R Evolution, an authentic jewel of engineering, had to take a privileged place in the living room of his 300 square meter apartment In Miami valued at about eight million dollars. Beyond being a whole purchasing power displayhaving a zonda exposed on the wall of your salon is a declaration of love for motoring, taken to the extreme of converting a supercar In a work of art contemporary. The Pagani Zonda R Evolution: A masterpiece of engineering The Pagani Zonda R Evolution, also known as Revolution, is a high performance supercar designed for circuits, but with such a spectacular aesthetic that could well be considered a work of art. Pietro Martelletti. Courtesy of RM Sotherby’s Equipped with a 6.0 -liter V12 engine developed by Mercedes AMG, this car is able to deliver the impressive 800 hp figure. The body is manufactured in carbon fiber and titanium, which allows you to reduce your weight to only 1,070 kilos. To put it in perspective, this supercar that measures 4.40 meters long, weighs less than conventional tourism. Its exclusivity is such that only 15 units of this Zonda R have been manufactured, which makes it a piece coveted by collectors. In addition, this is the only unit that is prepared to be hung in a living room. In its manufacture and design, Horacio Pagani himself participated. A car hanging in the living room: the Dark Minion project The Expilet has the habit of baptizing all its cars with unique and personal names. The unit chosen for this project was called “Dark Minion” and was specially modified to be installed on the wall of its living room. Touch the photo to go to the original message Such and as they detail in Robb ReportPagani withdrew the engine and modified several elements to reduce its weight to 360 kilos, but maintaining the appearance and original car design. “Many hours of coordination were needed between our local engineers, the Italian engineers of Pagani and the experts of the construction department to carry out the complexity of this project. There are no precedents in the US of a work of this size,” said Carina Radonich, co -director of Finish My Condo, Design Study Project manager. To support the weight of the body, a special aluminum and carbon fiber column was designed that allows the car “floats” over the room. In addition, the entire Pagani team that participated in the transformation signed the rear wing, turning this unit into an absolutely unique piece. “There is no other zonda in the world,” Pérez said proudly. The difficulties were not limited to their design and modification. Now it was necessary to raise it 27 meters high even in its definitive location. Installing a car of these dimensions and features inside an apartment is not a simple task. To achieve this, it was necessary to gather a team of 25 people, among which they were also Horacio Pagani. The operation required a millimeter planning and the use of specialized machinery to introduce the Zonda R Evolution for the large window of the terrace. “There was an overwhelming moment of silence when they raised the car,” Radonich remembered. Finally, the car was installed in its final location, serving as an original separation between the room and the bedroom of the apartment. A separation of 2.2 million dollars. In Xataka | A millionaire wanted to decorate his living room with an impressive rolls-Royce Ghost. Living on a 44 floor did not seem to import him Image | ZONDA, RM Sotherby’s

A dismembered Lamborghini and a fillet coffee maker with a single goal: to turn them into art

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Art is subjective. There are those who think that Everything can be art From the right prism. AND That subjectivity It is what makes us hallucine or grind us in equal parts Conceptual art. Or that a banana attached to a canvas with an insulating tape is art (of 6.2 million dollars, yes). It can also be eternal, and that is a quality that, unfortunately, does not have the objects we use daily. But … what if we could preserve something in your current state forever And, at the same time, to meet the millimeter how is its interior? That is the question that was at some point the head of the Swiss artist Fabian Oefner, who has perfected an artistic process that analyzes the millimeter the objects with which he works, to the point of mixing tactile, aesthetic and conceptual elements in his work. And what do you like? Destroy things. But although that seems to be at odds with the Eternal preservation of the object, in the case of Oefner’s work, it has all the meaning of the world. The art of tear a nikon, a bialetti or a lamborghini Oefner has three weapons: its camera, a lot of resin and … tons of patience. It has several projects, such as which, together with Google Arts & Culture, merged environmental science and visual art to represent the Relation of alpine glaciers. Among other things. His most visual work is ‘Cutup’ and ‘Disintegring’. The two are impressive, but let’s start with the latter. As the name implies, in it Oefner disintegrates the objects he photographs. An image captures a moment, but in ‘Disintegring’, Oefner wants us to imagine a vehicle swollening at full speedwith each piece leaving in full movement Is what he has done with cars Lamborghini, Jaguar or Mercedesbut also with the Riva Aquaramaa ship that shows to what extent the process of performing this photograph is artisanal. To achieve it, Oefner photographed the ship in bird sight, but later in the study, he made another hundreds of photographs of components of the V8 engines, elements of the cabin, the seats or even splinters of the helmet to, once with more than 1,800 snapshots under his credit, compose The image. On the other hand, we have ‘Cutup’. As the descriptionincludes a series of “technical objects that are cut, rearrange and distort in a new way. Objects are encapsulated in resin to capture them in their current state forever.” And it is the evolution of ‘disintegring’, since that 2D vision goes to a three -dimensional plane. To do this, Oefner encapsulates an object in resin. It does it through vacuum and pressure chambers so that there are no air bubbles or foreign elements that may affect the result, and all this in an atmospheric pressure environment and controlled temperature to the millimeter. Once the resin is stabilized, squeezes using powerful presses and, thanks to a mountain range, it is making cross cuts. It is like ‘fillet’ the object. The result is that, for example, it obtains several ‘slices’ from a camera that puls by hand. After this process, that you can see in this videoand when those fillets are transparent enough to show the object without difficulty, place the pieces in the way you want and embody them again in resin to obtain the final form. In this way, we have a “sculpture” of the camera, but being able to see its interior. But ‘Cutup’ has a twist: instead of assembling the object again in a new resin frame, Oefner had an idea: to turn each slide into the page of a book. It is something that you have done with some objects on scale, such as car models, but perhaps its most famous work in this plane is the BIALETTI BOOK. In it, we can see different cross cuts from a Bialetti coffee maker which shows not only the machine, but water in the base, coffee in a state of Extraction in the bush and liquid coffee In the upper chamber. They are very thin sheets that make us appreciate the object inside, but if we put the book vertically and look straight ahead, it is like seeing the complete coffee maker from that angle. OEFTER states that he does not see destruction as something negative and that he uses that process of “breaking” objects and reensating them as a way of enhancing all the pieces and components of the original object, immortalizing that protagonist in his current state. That coffee maker cut into cachitos is sentenced to Prepare coffee For all eternity. However, art is also ephemeral, such as the six million banana we talked about by some paragraphs … than ended in his buyer’s stomach. Images | LamborghiniStudio Oefner In Xataka | Goodbye to Ouka Leele, the artist who painted her photographs and was key to the move

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