James Frey's Blog, page 11

There is another sky.

from artnet

How This Artist Is Using Ancient Ice and Stardust to Create Neo-Metaphysical Art

Katie Paterson is currently the subject of a solo show with James Cohan in New York.

Installation view of “Katie Paterson: There is another sky” (2025), showing left: Evergreen (2022), right: The Moment (2022). Courtesy of James Cohan, New York.

For her first substantial presentation in New York in almost a decade, Scottish artist Katie Paterson has endeavored to create a space where the cosmos and Earth merge.

On view through February 22, 2025, at James Cohan Gallery’s 52 Walker Street, Paterson’s exhibition, “There is another sky,” includes a range of pieces that reflect her expanded approach to art-making, featuring unusual materials that are hard to come by and informed by investigative research and collaborations with scientists, geologists, perfumers, and craftspeople. In one work, a lacquer infused with the ashes of over 10,000 tree species took years to source and develop. Another piece includes stardust. Evergreen (2022) is the first-ever image archive of extinct flowering plants that Paterson created in collaboration with a botanical illustrator and scientists.

[ click to continue reading at artnet ]

Not yet.

from The Financial Times

Have humans passed peak brain power?

Data across countries and ages reveal a growing struggle to concentrate, and declining verbal and numerical reasoning

by JOHN BURN-MURDOCH

What is intelligence? This may sound like a straightforward question with a straightforward answer — the Oxford English Dictionary defines it as “a capacity to understand” — but that definition itself raises an increasingly relevant question in the modern world. What happens if the extent to which we can practically apply that capacity is diminishing? Evidence is mounting that something exactly like this has been happening to the human intellect over the past decade or so.

Nobody would argue that the fundamental biology of the human brain has changed in that far-too-short time span. However, across a range of tests, the average person’s ability to reason and solve novel problems appears to have peaked in the early 2010s and has been declining ever since.

When the latest round of analysis from PISA, the OECD’s international benchmarking test for performance by 15-year-olds in reading, mathematics and science tests, was released, the focus understandably fell on the role of the Covid pandemic in disrupting education. But this masked a longer-term and broader deterioration.

[ click to continue reading at FT ]

Dream Receivers

from StudyFinds

Why some people remember their dreams (and others don’t)

Reviewed by Sophia Naughton

About a fourth of people don’t remember their dreams. (Roman Samborskyi/Shutterstock)Study shows that daydreamers are more likely to have stronger recall of their overnight adventures

LUCCA, Italy — What were you dreaming about last night? For roughly one in four people, that question draws a blank. For others, the answer comes easily, complete with vivid details about flying through clouds or showing up unprepared for an exam. This stark contrast in dream recall ability has baffled researchers for decades, but a new study reveals there’s more to remembering dreams than pure chance.

From March 2020 to March 2024, scientists from multiple Italian research institutions conducted a sweeping investigation to uncover what determines dream recall. Published in Communications Psychology, their research surpassed typical dream studies by combining detailed sleep monitoring, cognitive testing, and brain activity measurements. The study involved 217 healthy adults between ages 18 and 70, who did far more than simply keep dream journals; they underwent brain tests, wore sleep-tracking wristbands, and some even had their brain activity monitored throughout the night.

[ click to continue reading at StudyFinds ]

Soul, Man

from The Daily Mail

Scientists capture end-of-life brain activity that could prove humans have souls

By STACY LIBERATORE

A mysterious burst of energy that happens in the brain as we die could be the soul leaving the body, according to an expert.

Dr Stuart Hameroff, anesthesiologist and professor at the University of Arizona, recently discussed a study that captured the brain activity of clinically dead patients.

He explained how researchers placed small sensors on the brains of seven chronically ill patients minutes before they were taken off life support, allowing them to capture activity after each patient’s blood pressure and heart dropped to zero.

[ click to continue reading at The Daily Mail ]

JAMES FREY on the 10

AI© v.1

from artnet

How This A.I. Image Became the First to Snag Copyright Protection

The U.S. Copyright Office ruled generally last month that work created from A.I. text prompts could not be copyrighted.

by Adam Schrader

Kent Keirsey, A Single Piece of American Cheese (2024). Photo courtesy of Invoke.

Invoke, a generative artificial intelligence platform, has been granted the first copyright protections for an A.I. image since new guidelines were handed down by the U.S. Copyright Office last month that generally ruled art created with text prompts cannot be copyrighted.

The Copyright Office had made its ruling in the context of existing laws that provide limited protections for such work. But they noted a range of human-A.I. collaboration can exist, indicating there is a threshold where an A.I. artwork could be considered human-made. The agency determined that such a threshold would come down to a case-by-case basis.

Led by founder and chief executive Kent Keirsey, Invoke has been trying to find that thin line to offer a product that would help artists create works that may be eligible for copyright protection. He called it “massive” that the copyright protections were granted for the customers of his product who need to be able to copyright their works.

[ click to continue reading at artnet ]

Coming Soon!

from WIRED

This Is Where Asteroid 2024 YR4 Could Strike

There is a 2 percent chance that seven years from now, “the city destroyer” will hit Earth with the force of an 8-megaton nuclear weapon. Here are its possible impact points.

MARK GARLICK / GETTY IMAGES

ASTEROID 2024 YR4, measuring approximately 40 to 100 meters wide, will pass very close to Earth in December 2032—and might even strike the planet. Because of its size, speed, and the possibility of it making impact, the internet has given it the nickname of “the city destroyer.”

Major space agencies, such as the European Space Agency, estimate there’s about a 2 percent chance that 2024 YR4 will hit Earth, though this risk figure will be updated as scientists learn more about the asteroid’s path. Although it’s far more likely the asteroid will miss Earth, sites that could be affected by a collision have already been identified.

[ click to continue reading at WIRED ]

James Frey and Fiona Eltz @ Teodor Doré in Chelsea

from New York Social Diary

Birthday stories, stories of exile, and more stories in the form of dreams

BY: DAVID PATRICK COLUMBIA

[image error]James Frey and Fiona Eltz.

Pianist Teodor Doré and his ensemble presented a chamber concert at the Chelsea loft of fellow pianist (and friend), Jonathan DePeri.

The concert was inspired by themes of exile, displacement, and longing for homeland.  The Crimean-born Doré is now an exile, as are his accompanists: soprano Anastasiya Roytman from Ukraine, violinist Taisiya Losmakovafrom Belarus, and Grammy-nominated cellist Sergey Antonov, who is from Russia.

It was standing-room-only for the audience of more than 80 guests who filled the double height music room and balcony where Doré performed Sergei Rachmaninoff, as well as his own compositions; a highlight of the evening, his new orchestration of Suite in D Minor, made with the approval and encouragement of Rachmaninoff’s great-granddaughter, Alexandra Conus Rachmaninoff.

[ click to continue reading at New York Social Diary ]

Plutocracy Redux

from The Atlantic

The Rise of the Selfish Plutocrats

Instead of pursuing philanthropy, many now seek to evade social responsibility.

By Brian Klaas

Illustration by Akshita Chandra / The Atlantic. Sources: Getty; Wikimedia Commons.

In the early 1500s, an unknown wealthy patron is said to have commissioned Leonardo da Vinci to produce the Salvator Mundi, a striking ecclesiastical masterpiece in which Jesus is shown blessing humanity with his right hand while holding an orb representing the Earth in his left. The patron’s identity has been lost to history, and whether da Vinci actually painted it is still debated among scholars, but such commissions were common during the medieval and Renaissance periods: Medici-like benefactors, uncomfortable with the potential sinfulness of their extravagant wealth, sought to offset their guilt and enhance their prestige by sponsoring magnificent works of art and architecture for the public to enjoy.

Da Vinci’s Salvator Mundi changed hands countless times through the ensuing centuries. Mistaken as a comparatively commonplace artwork, it was owned by a 17th-century heir to the Scottish crown who was later beheaded, passed to the illegitimate son of an 18th-century duke, and then languished in obscurity for more than a century. An unknown buyer acquired the painting at auction for £45, or about $1,300 today, and it ended up in Houston. The painting later passed to Basil Clovis Hendry Sr., who ran a Baton Rouge, Louisiana, sheet-metal company. Then, in 2005, on suspicion that there was more to the painting than met the untrained eye, an art consortium bought the painting for just over $1,000. Years of restoration, cleaning, research, and speculation yielded a shocking announcement: The painting was Da Vinci’s lost Salvator Mundi.

[ click to continue reading at The Atlantic ]

AI Auction v.1

from OBSERVER

Christie’s Is Holding the First Ever Dedicated A.I. Art Sale at a Major Auction House

How you feel about that might just depend on how much human intervention you think is required to make A.I. generated art legitimate.

By Christa Terry

Harold Cohen (1928-2016), Untitled (i23-03758); Estimate: $10,000-15,000. CHRISTIE’S IMAGES LTD 2025

I felt a vague sense of disquietude when I received word from Christie’s that it would be hosting the first-ever artificial intelligence-dedicated sale at a major house. Just a little moment of unease. Frankly, it’s hard to shush those quiet biases that make a person want to categorize all art into “real art” and “other,” as if I have somehow earned the right to make that distinction. But unpacking my kneejerk reaction to the Augmented Intelligence auction, which will be open for bidding from February 20 through March 5, didn’t take long. I am a person who makes things, and the adoption of artificial intelligence technologies in creative spheres feels like an existential threat when you’re someone who has roped material survival to artistic impulses.

I’m also a realist. Artificial intelligence can write and draw and, tethered to a robotic arm, it can paint, and it can make data so beautiful we put it in museums, but there’s always a human being behind the curtain pulling the strings, whether by writing code or dreaming up ideas or otherwise telling A.I. what to do. (For the record, it can also chase glitches, sus out breast cancers better than human doctors and, just maybe, break your porn habit.) I also futz around with artificial intelligence on the regular because I’m not as afraid of A.I. stealing my job as I am of someone who’s really good at using A.I. stealing it.

[ click to continue reading at OBSERVER ]