art

In Alicante they are experts making works with ancient art. Until they found a Roman sphinx embedded in a staircase

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Recycling in the architecture of Antiquity (or the Middle Ages) was neither an ecological sensitivity nor an aesthetic trend. Rather, it was pure and simple economic survival. If you had good quality square stone, go ahead and build. It mattered little whether that stone had been part of a temple dedicated to Jupiter, whether it was the statue of a disgraced emperor or, as in this case, a mythological creature. It has a name: architectural cannibalism is known in the art world as spolia. And thanks (or because) of it, Spanish archeology has just solved a mystery that had been gathering dust in a warehouse for decades. In the archaeological site of El Monastil, located in the town of Elda (Alicante), researchers have “decrypted” a piece who had been camouflaged under a false identity for too long. The rain acting as an archaeologist. It all started in the year 2000, during the arduous excavation work of a late Roman wall located in El Monastil. Workers unearthed a three-step ladder that looked like a typical routine structural find. The following year, the Levantine climate worked its magic: torrential rains swept the area and caused the ashlars to collapse, exposing new features. Upon inspecting the damage, the team led by archaeologist Antonio M. Poveda discovered that one of the blocks was not conventionally quarried stone. The deliberate marks betrayed a previous history. Which? That someone, during the Visigoth or Byzantine occupation in the 5th or 6th centuries, mutilated a monumental sculpture, cutting it down with a sledgehammer to turn it into a simple step. Twenty years of confusion. Carved from local beige limestone, it was barely 31 centimeters high and 55 centimeters wide; what remains is a tiny fraction of its original volume. This sphinx was missing its head, wings and legs, with a surface so eroded by blows that its identification became a headache: an Iberian female figure or a random goddess? It wasn’t until last year, when the Archaeological Museum of Elda A thorough cleaning was undertaken when, in collaboration with Professor Ferrán Arasa i Gil, one of the greatest experts in Roman sculpture in Spain, remains were compared. And the shape matched too well with other sphinxes found in limes Germanic, from Romania and northern Italy. The verdict was unanimous: a Roman funerary sphinx from the 1st century AD The sophisticated security system for the afterlife. This creature of Egyptian origin and Greek traces is no ornament. And here is the key: it is a psychopomp, the guide in charge of collecting the soul of the deceased and transporting it. Its presence in the tomb fulfills an apotropaic function: the fierce gaze and hybrid posture, with the body of a lion and the torso of a woman, exist to scare away looters and protect the eternal sleep of those who rested beneath it. Have you seen ‘The Neverending Story’? His famous fulminating sphinxes are inspired by the same. Apparently, the owner of this piece was part of the rural elite of Ilici Augusta (current Elche). They were landowners who, in a time of great prosperity under Augustus and the Julio-Claudians, competed to display social status through monumental mausoleums. Built next to the Via Augusta. So the figure was another banner of power and prestige in full Romanization. He plunders well without looking at who. For the Visigoths, the sphinx was no longer a sacred symbol. The case of Elda, with this disdain for the artistic past in favor of pragmatism, rhymes quite well with other recycling imposed in Baetulo (Badalona), Segóbriga (Cuenca), Obulco (Jaén) or Carissa Aurelia (Cádiz). The most canonical example is found in the mosque of Córdoba: Abd al-Rahman I reused Roman and Visigoth columns and capitals, from the temple of Janus, from previous Christian villas and basilicas, to raise the forest of columns in the prayer room. In Toledo, the Christ of Light is the ancient Bab al-Mardum mosque. San Pedro de la Nave, in Zamora, was a 7th century Visigoth church dismantled and reassembled like a collage. And the same with the Basilica of Santa Eulalia, in Mérida, built on a Roman temple dedicated to Mars. Even the Almohad minaret of the Giralda in Seville was converted into a Christian bell tower by the braves. What makes special Monastil is that it is an inexhaustible “matryoshka” of civilizations. This Alicante site is a time capsule where the Bronze Age, the Punic presence, the Roman military base from the time of Pompey, the Byzantine monastery and the later Visigoth church overlap. In this immense network of strata it is easy to find history cut up and relocated, outside the contexts for which it was created. Many now lie in the warehouse of the Elda museum, treasures waiting to be reclassified and archaeological history rewritten. Images | FoxR for Wikipedia, Flickr (Santiago López-Pastor) In Xataka | If the question is how the Egyptian pyramids were made, science has an idea: hydraulic systems In Xataka | In a display of technical superiority, France has just invented traditional white towns. We, however, have forgotten about them

“It’s not like Europe, there aren’t many more original art forms here”

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Clint Eastwood has been convinced for decades that the Western is one of the few things that the United States can truly call its own. The irony is that it was filming in Almería under the orders of a director from Rome that revitalized and updated the genre. He was there, but he still thinks that there are few things as American as the Westen. Original art. In recent statementsEastwood stated that “Honestly, America is not like Europe. There aren’t many original art forms here. Most of them are derived from European art forms. Aside from Western, jazz or blues, that’s all that’s really original.” And there is nothing disdainful in his words, although it may seem like it: Eastwood rather seems to vindicate the genuinely North American nature of the Western, although the evolution of the genre and the actor’s own filmography have made it clear that, at this point, it is one of the most bastard genres in the history of cinema. Western, jazz and blues. In fact, we could dwell on the very precise enumeration of artistic forms that Eastwood considers purely North American. The blues emerged from the deep south and the experience of slavery. Jazz, from New Orleans, at a cross between the African heritage and the music that European immigrants brought from their countries. Finally, the Western speaks of the border in perpetual movement, of the clash between European “civilization” and what it finds in its path (mainly, natives who defend themselves as best they can). They are three artistic forms born from tension, conflict and miscegenation, which explains a lot about the way of being of the country’s inhabitants. And yes, they are purely North American because all three are firmly rooted in the history and philosophy of an unusually young country. An American in Italy. Before 1964, Eastwood was a television actor moderately known for the series ‘Rawhide’. But that year, Sergio Leone signed him for ‘A Fistful of Dollars’‘, an Italian-Spanish-German co-production filmed between the Cinecittà studios in Rome and the Cabo de Gata Natural Park in Almería. The success of the film launched the Dollar Trilogy, completed with ‘Death Had a Price’ and ‘The Good, the Bad and the Ugly’, which established Eastwood as an international figure of the genre. A new character. Eastwood was more than just a protagonist for the trilogy: he was a new type of gunslinger: John Ford and John Wayne’s cowboys were moral heroes, protecting the weak and serving a code of honor. The Nameless Man of the Dollar Trilogy acts for money, switches sides without problems, and his moral compass is arid and often indecipherable, like the landscape of Almería. Eastwood in America. The actor understood that vision and when he returned to his country, he modulated it to his liking, with westerns that are not a nostalgic tribute to the classics of the genre, but rather a dissection that takes into account what Leone and his many imitators contributed to the western. ‘Hell of Cowards’, ‘The Pale Horseman’ or, above all, ‘Unforgiven’ examine the violence of the West without glamor or redemption. “Killing is not right and it is not romantic,” he came to say. The recognition. It is worth remembering that ‘Unforgiven’ won the Oscar for Best Film and Best Director in 1993. Before it, only ‘Cimarrón’ in 1931 and ‘Dances with Wolves’ in 1990 had won. That is to say, for the film industry to finally recognize the importance of the genre, it had to undertake a long journey of reinvention and self-observation in which the European vision had a lot to do with it. In Xataka | Today on HBO Max: the latest film directed by one of the greatest masters in the history of cinema

Science also begins to study the effect of art and culture

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“Ah, a lot of gym. But it works the brain a little too.” When Shakira uttered this phrase, immediately converted into a global meme thanks to her session with Bizarrap, she certainly did not intend to lay the foundations for a new scientific hypothesis about aging. And yet, in the midst of the era of biohackinglongevity supplements and timed wellness routines, a recent British study has just put the focus exactly there: on the brain, emotions and culture. We have been hearing for years that the secret to aging gracefully involves count grams of protein, lift weights, nail eight hours of sleep, avoid glucose spikes and of course reach the sacrosanct 10,000 steps a day. Longevity has become a cocktail of science, aesthetic obsession and multi-billion dollar industry. However, a team of researchers from University College London (UCL) has put an unexpected ingredient in the shaker: visiting museums, getting lost in a good book or vibrating at a concert also tangibly influences how our body ages. The investigation, published in the scientific journal Innovation in Aginganalyzed data from 3,556 British adults over 50 years of age. Pulling the thread of the English Longitudinal Study of Aging (ELSA)—one of the most ambitious European projects on the subject—scientists crossed two seemingly unconnected worlds: cultural habits and physical biomarkers. On the one hand, they recorded how often these people went to the theater, visited galleries, listened to music, danced or painted. On the other hand, they measured their biological clock through blood tests and epigenetic data. The main conclusion was that those who participated in cultural activities at least once a week showed biological aging approximately 4% slower than those who only carried out this type of activity a few times a year. Furthermore, according to one of the indicators used by the team, the most culturally involved people had a biological age close to one year younger than the least culturally active participants. Professor Daisy Fancourt, lead author of the study, explained in the UCL statement that the results suggest that “artistic and cultural activities should be considered beneficial health behaviors, similar to physical activity.” The museum is not a magic pill It is advisable to curb your enthusiasm: the study does not say that reading Tolstoy will take away your wrinkles or that an exhibition replaces a good cardio session. Nor does it guarantee that listening to Clara Schumann automatically lengthens your life. What is evident is a strong correlation. People who often participate in cultural activities have better aging indicators, but correlation does not imply causation. As I well remembered Guardianmany experts insist that this type of research should be interpreted with caution. People who frequently consume culture also tend to share other factors: higher educational levels, higher incomes, less financial stress, healthier lifestyles, and a stronger emotional support network. Although the authors adjusted the statistics to isolate variables such as smoking, previous physical exercise or socioeconomic status, cleaning the equation of all confounding factors is an almost impossible task. Still, the findings dovetail perfectly with an increasingly robust line of science that underscores the biological impact of emotional health and social connectedness. According to the magazine Healththe secret is not in the museum or the book itself, but in what happens inside us when we enjoy them: stress is reduced, isolation decreases, the brain is stimulated, we regulate our emotions better and we receive a good shot of dopamine. Art would not cure by itself, but it would trigger physiological processes that do stop biological deterioration. And that, without a doubt, changes the terms of the conversation. Beyond muscle and metabolism Perhaps the truly revolutionary thing about this study is not that “4% slower”, but the paradigm shift it puts on the table. We have been understanding healthy aging for decades almost exclusively through physical parameters: diet, sweat and cardiovascular prevention. All of that remains essential. In fact, the study itself does not at any point question the benefits of physical exercise. But contemporary science is embracing a broader idea: aging is not just a metabolic or muscular process. It is an emotional, mental and deeply social process. Concepts as the “cognitive reserve” —the protective shield that the brain creates against deterioration thanks to continuous intellectual stimulation— are already common in neuroscience. Learning, having stimulating talks or being impacted by a work of art strengthen that shield. At the same time, disciplines such as psychoimmunology they are teaching us how loneliness, chronic stress or depression punish the body through inflammation and hormonal imbalances. Social isolation is already a major cardiovascular risk factor. This is where culture jumps out of the drawer of mere “entertainment” to reveal itself as a key tool for physiological well-being. The interesting thing is that the study does not talk about extraordinary habits or impossible routines. It talks about everyday practices such as reading a few pages before going to sleep, listening to music on the way to work, commenting on a movie after the cinema and going to an exhibition on any given Sunday. Small cultural gestures that, according to this line of research, could have more biological impact than it seemed. In fact, in the UK this has already jumped from theory to practice. The British health system has long been promoting “social prescription” (social prescribing), a strategy where doctors refer patients to community and cultural activities as a complement to traditional medicine. Reading groups, art workshops, choirs or gardening are prescribed to combat anxiety, cognitive decline or depression in older people. Daisy Fancourt herself is a pioneer in this field, documenting in his book Art Cure how art tangibly intervenes in physical and mental health. The antidote to the stress of hyper-optimization That this study has gone viral reveals something deeply contemporary: collective exhaustion in the face of the tyranny of productive well-being. Today, wanting to live longer seems too similar to an endless spreadsheet– Measure steps, macronutrients, heart rate, REM sleep, and ice water immersion. In such a gridded panorama, … Read more

The almadraba has a reputation for being an ancient, artisanal and sustainable art. But behind it lies one of the wildest industrializations of the sea

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The Phoenicians arrived on the coasts of Andalusia about 3,000 years ago looking for gold, silver and copper. They stayed for everything else. By the 5th century BC, the factories on the coast of the Strait were already shipping amphorae and amphorae filled with salted tuna throughout the Mediterranean. As we believe, that was when the almadraba was invented. Or so we think. It’s only half the story. The other half is what happens with the tunas that, despite falling into the codend, do not die that day. Many of these tunas (the smallest ones) end up captured and, while still alive, are transferred to marine cages where they remain for up to four months feeding on fish (sardines, mackerel, horse mackerel or chinarros) until they reach the ideal level of fat required by the market. In contrast to the three-millennial trap that enters the codend “with blood and fire” and sacrifices the tuna (to deep-freeze it), there is another that borders on the world of aquaculture, de-seasonalizes the supply and improves the quality of the product. The second, without a doubt, is the most unknown. And that fattening system images They are spectacular. But it’s a logical move. After all, Cádiz traps only catch fish in a short window of time. Normally between the end of April and mid-June. By reserving the smallest tuna and baiting it until September, the product can be sold much more expensive. And it is the only reason to do so because the feed conversion ratio of bluefin tuna in cages is the highest of any species raised or fattened in captivity. While our tunas need between 20 and 30 kilos of oily fish to gain a kilo (20:1-30:1), salmon only need one kilo and pork three. It is not without problems, of course. We already know that filling the sea with fish farms It is a huge source of ecological problems. It is true that it has had a brutal effect on the democratization of fish consumption, but the cost is decimating wild fish populations. However, the case of tuna is different. Its impact on the populations of oily fish that serve as food is great, of course. But it is still small, simply because we have not learned to raise it from scratch: you have to fish to fatten it up. If the efforts of institutions like the CSIC are successful, the Strait will have a problem that will be counted in thousands of tons of exports. Image | SLADE | Big Dodzy In Xataka | Spain is going to continue fishing for eels until we have no more eels to catch

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

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