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Scoop
a day ago
- Science
- Scoop
How Much Of The Past Should We Bring Back To Life?
There is an incredible amount of scientific effort put toward understanding the past and bringing some of it back to life. Everyone agrees it's nice to have some old structures around—like the pyramids at Giza and the Great Wall of China—but what about the living creatures we once lived alongside? With recent advances in genetic technology, de-extinction may be a possibility—but should we be doing it? Several scientific disciplines are currently geared specifically to provide us with realistic insights into what life would have been like in the past. Archaeology in particular has rank after rank of specialists tuned toward reconstructing the built environment—monuments, houses, caves, and even whole towns—and the ways people would have lived in those environments. We conduct these experiments to understand the choices our species has made as we evolved into the cultures and societies that exist today, and we conserve the walls and temples of our pasts because they mean something to the people who visit them. We have highly trained conservators who carefully rebuild, brick by brick, the great Mesopotamian temples of 5,500 years ago (alongside conservators who are not as well-trained but whose good intentions outstrip their abilities, as seen with the case of the Ecce Homo reconstruction in Borja, Spain). There are also an extraordinary number of experimental archaeology projects aimed at unraveling even the most intangible mysteries of the past—helping us see that the beautiful Paleolithic art in caves like Lascaux may have been an early form of animation when seen under a torch, or that making some stone tools requires special cognitive abilities. Advances in technology make the reconstruction of the past increasingly realistic. But what if we could recreate the living environment of our evolutionary past? What if we could bring back species that haven't been seen since the last Ice Age? This is exactly the question that a major new research effort is asking. The Colossal project is a private enterprise that wants to use advances in genetics to attempt the 'de-extinction' or 'resurrection' of an iconic Ice Age animal: the woolly mammoth. De-extinction has certainly grabbed imaginations (not to mention headlines), but as research funding is squeezed by economic conditions around the globe, scientists must ask themselves: what will this achieve? For Colossal, there are clear benefits. There is the wow factor of creating a cold-adapted elephant that has not existed for thousands of years, and of course, there is the potential of developing new and, possibly, incredibly lucrative bioscience tech based on modifying genetics. Perhaps these technologies could save animals from extinction and bring back the past, even if many scientists are concerned about the prospect due to ethical and technical reasons. However, as archaeology has learned, bringing back the past is never as straightforward as it seems. Something as obvious as preserving 1,000-year-old ruins for future generations to marvel at becomes less clear-cut when future generations might need to build their own monuments and walls (or even just roads). How much of the past should we bring back? The debate over how much of the Stonehenge prehistoric landscape should be sacrificed to build a tunnel for one of the most congested roads in England has shown that even trained professionals can't agree on what is 'enough' of the past to save. This makes for some tricky questions for those who want to rebuild and recreate the past. What will happen if we really do succeed in the 'de-extinction' of a woolly mammoth—an animal that will be born alone into a world that it is not adapted to? Will it help us save the elephants that are under threat today? Colossal is putting a lot of effort into elephant conservation, but how will creating a genetically cold-adapted elephant address the habitat loss that has led our big-bodied species to face extinction? Would we be better off spending our research efforts on recreating the environments of the past, or the charismatic animals who once roamed them? What parts of the past to preserve—and which to leave behind—remains a complicated tangle of ethical, practical, and even philosophical quandaries. The toppling of a historic statue of a slave trader into Bristol harbor in 2021 by outraged citizens is a clear example of how governments, citizens, and professionals are still grappling with how we bring the past into the present. As technology advances, we will be confronted with even thornier issues—like the ethics of bringing animals or even people back to life. If we cannot agree on the morality of preserving the past as a cold metal statue, how will we resolve the question surrounding the consequences of bringing something that lives and breathes back into the world? Author Bio: Brenna R. Hassett, PhD, is a biological anthropologist and archaeologist at the University of Central Lancashire and a scientific associate at the Natural History Museum, London. In addition to researching the effects of changing human lifestyles on the human skeleton and teeth in the past, she writes for a more general audience about evolution and archaeology, including the Times (UK) top 10 science book of 2016 Built on Bones: 15,000 Years of Urban Life and Death, and her most recent book, Growing Up Human: The Evolution of Childhood. She is also a co-founder of TrowelBlazers, an activist archive celebrating the achievements of women in the 'digging' sciences.
Yahoo
11-06-2025
- Science
- Yahoo
Put the paintbrush down – AI can restore artworks quicker and better
Artificial intelligence (AI) could spell the end of art restoration by humans after MIT showed that damaged paintings can be repaired in just a few hours. Typically, conservators spend months or years researching and matching paints, colours and techniques to ensure the finished product is as close to the original as possible. But Alex Kachkine, an engineering graduate at MIT, has shown it is possible to use AI to fill in the damaged areas digitally, then print the restored layers onto a thin film to attach on top of the painting. It means the painting appears restored even though the original is still intact beneath. The method was applied to a highly damaged 15th-century oil painting, and AI immediately identified 5,612 separate regions in need of repair, and filled in these regions using 57,314 different colours. The entire process, from start to finish, took just three and a half hours. 'There is a lot of damaged art in storage that might never be seen,' said Mr Kachkine. 'Hopefully with this new method, there's a chance we'll see more art, which I would be delighted by.' In recent years, digital restoration tools have allowed conservators to create virtual representations of restored works. AI algorithms can quickly sift through huge amounts of data about artists and time periods to generate a digitally restored version of a particular painting, in a way that closely resembles the correct style. However, digital restorations are usually displayed virtually or printed as stand-alone works and until now there has never been a way to translate the digital restorations on to the original work. The new technique involves first scanning the painting and then using software to create maps of the areas that require repair, before matching the correct colours. The maps are then inkjet printed onto two sheets of a film. One film, which sits underneath, is printed in white so that the colours overlaid on the second sheet are not muddied by the colours of the original painting. The layers are carefully aligned and overlaid by hand onto the original painting and adhered with a thin spray of varnish. The printed films are made from materials that can be easily dissolved with conservation-grade solutions, in case conservators need to reveal the original, damaged work. The digital file of the mask can also be saved as a detailed record of what was restored. For the painting that Mr Kachkine used, the method was able to fill in thousands of losses in just a few hours. 'A few years ago, I was restoring this baroque Italian painting with probably the same order magnitude of losses, and it took me nine months of part-time work,' he said. 'The more losses there are, the better this method is.' The new technique may even help restore botched restorations such as Elias Garcia Martinez's Ecce Homo, which was restored so badly it was dubbed Monkey Christ, because of the Simian features of Jesus. Mr Kachkine acknowledges that there were ethical issues to consider, in terms of whether a restored version was an appropriate representation of an artist's original style and intent. He said the process should be carried out in consultation with conservators with knowledge of a painting's history and origins to check the AI programme was not going off-piste. 'Restoring a painting is fun, and it's great to sit down and infill things and have a nice evening,' he added 'But that's a very slow process.' The research was published in Nature. Broaden your horizons with award-winning British journalism. Try The Telegraph free for 1 month with unlimited access to our award-winning website, exclusive app, money-saving offers and more.
Times
02-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Times
Gavin Friday: ‘I wouldn't wish Bono's success on anybody'
Gavin Friday first demanded attention with the Virgin Prunes, the Dublin art rock band whose sensibility was more Jacques Brel than the blues. They shook audiences in the late 1970s and early 1980s, including one infamous appearance on The Late Late Show. 'They are unique and different,' said a clearly nervous Gay Byrne by way of introduction. He wasn't wrong. Friday often wore dresses and make-up before such things were popular or profitable. Despite the Virgin Prunes' cult success, Friday left the band in 1986, turning first to painting before recording three albums with the multi-instrumentalist Maurice Seezer. One of these, Shag Tobacco, came perilously close to housing a genuine hit when the gorgeous Angel was included on the soundtrack to the Baz Luhrmann-directed film Romeo and Juliet. Born Fionán Hanvey in 1959, Friday's dance card has also included a spot of acting, popping up beside Cillian Murphy in both Disco Pigs and Neil Jordan's Breakfast on Pluto, and he and Seezer have composed several high-profile film scores including their Ivor Novello-nominated work on Jim Sheridan's In America. He released a solo record, Catholic, back in 2011, which stood alone until last October's follow-up, Ecce Homo. Friday also hadn't played a headlining gig in over a decade, but remedied that with some recent European dates and two Irish shows, including a night at Dublin's Vicar Street venue last month. The gig reviews glowed. Today we are talking over coffee and cigarettes in Friday's beautiful Rathmines townhouse, where he moved a few years back after an extended sojourn in Killiney. At his feet sits his constant companion, the 15-year-old dachshund Stan (the Man). Stan's twin brother Ralfie passed away 18 months ago and both of them are celebrated on the song The Best Boys in Dublin. 'Life got in the way,' Friday says of his recording hiatus. 'And whatever came around the corner.' He details many 'great musical adventures … Then my ma's Alzheimer's got really bad and you just have to start looking after her.' Ecce Homo is dedicated to Anne Storey Hanvey, who died in 2017. Talk turns to Friday's 'part-time job' as U2's creative consultant. He and Bono have been close friends since they were teenagers. Ecce Homo's elegiac When the World Was Young is dedicated to the U2 singer, and the visual artist and fellow former Virgin Prune Guggi. Bono, Guggi and the Edge were all in attendance at Friday's Vicar Street gig and were surely as mesmerised by their mate's performance as the rest of us. Having advised U2 on the right moves for decades ('I'm their biggest bullshit detector'), Friday was also one of the creative minds behind their recent Las Vegas Sphere triumph. 'I wouldn't wish Bono's success on anybody,' he says. 'We all felt a lot of pressure putting the Vegas shows together. We didn't know it would work but that's the greatness about them. U2 are the most supreme gamblers in the world. They break rules to try something different.' Friday has never feared an artistic flutter either. A previous 'musical adventure' and 'one of the most challenging things I ever did' was Drifting and Tilting: The Songs of Scott Walker at the Barbican in London. Walker, who recorded four peerless baroque solo albums before detouring into the avant-garde, directed Friday singing Jesse. 'It's about Elvis Presley's stillborn twin. Hence the name Elvis, his mother took the word 'lives' and turned it around.' Friday's Ecce Homo, a phrase meaning 'behold the man' attributed to Pontius Pilate as he presented a bedraggled Jesus to the angry mob, details the makings of Friday from the teenager getting high off shoe polish in the Gary Glitter-quoting Lady Esquire, to discovering the delights of European culture on the road with the Prunes, his version of going to college, to songs for his dear departed mother in both Lamento and Amaranthus. Stations of the Cross is dedicated to Sinéad O'Connor, whose singing on 1993's beautiful Bono/Friday co-write, You Made Me the Thief of Your Heart, should have won every award going. 'Stations of the Cross is not about Sinéad, although she was going to sing on it,' Friday explains, citing a plan formed before O'Connor's untimely death. 'When her son Shane passed I saw a black hole which sadly she didn't get out of. The media never took anything to do with her health into consideration, they wanted her to be that 'mad person' and then suddenly she's our Joan of Arc? I felt they weren't sympathetic when she was crying out, so I was annoyed at that but very moved by the public reaction on her death. We lost a true soldier.' • At home with Bono: 'I've always felt like an impersonator' Friday's current single The Church of Love brings everything full circle, toasting today's more open society, which perhaps the young Fionán dreamt of when he fashioned himself as Gavin Friday. 'Back in the day I wore a dress as a shield, but also as a threat. It was my way of saying, 'I'm a queer? Sure, but I'll kick your head in.' Those days are gone, now you see young 'Gavin Fridays' all over the place and you don't blink. You couldn't have imagined that back in the 1970s. I'm overjoyed, because they look great.' So much has changed that Friday has recently come out, in casual style. 'Someone asked me, who's this 'Patrick' that you dedicated the title track to?' No one had ever asked be about my sexuality before. I just answered: that's my partner. Yes, it was a quiet way but no one cared. There's the old saying, if it walks like a duck … We were wearing dresses, and the lyrics? I mean, hello?' The single's B-side is a cover of the 1989 Desireless Euro-hit Voyage, Voyage, sung in French of course, because it's Friday. 'It's Euro trash but I embrace it, I did that for a laugh and a love.' Laughter and love sums up an artist enjoying his adventures. 'I'm suspicious of anyone that's forever happy but I'm content,' he says. 'I'm fortunate I'm able to do this stuff but I want to concentrate on Gavin Friday, I want to bring out another album soon and tour again. I feel really comfortable on stage and I haven't done it properly on my own in years. Yes, I'm really excited about that.'
Jordan News
08-02-2025
- General
- Jordan News
Hidden portrait found under Titian masterpiece in Cyprus - Jordan News
Researchers in Cyprus have discovered a hidden portrait that lay undetected for centuries beneath a 1570 oil painting by Renaissance master Titian, a rendering of which is now on display in the city of Limassol. اضافة اعلان The newly discovered work shows a unidentified man with a thin moustache, quill in hand, standing next to a stack of papers or books - a prosaic image compared to the scene of Jesus Christ, bound and wearing a crown of thorns, that Titian later painted over it. The painting "holds a secret, and the secret is that there is, unknown until now, a painting underneath," said Professor Nikolas Bakirtzis, who leads a team at the Cyprus Institute (CyI), a non-profit educational body. The finished artwork, called Ecce Homo - meaning "Behold, The Man" in English - shows Jesus standing next to Pontius Pilate, who presided over the last stages of Jesus' trial before he was crucified. The painting was being prepared for conservation when researchers put it under a microscope and noticed different pigments through the craquelure, or pattern of fine cracks that form on the surface of old paintings. "It was like uncovering a puzzle," said Bakirtzis. Using a combination of imaging and non-invasive analytical techniques, researchers at the Andreas Pittas Art Characterization Laboratories (APAC) at CyI pieced together the full, buried portrait. Based on the X-ray visuals, experts then created an oil painting of the man. "It is clearly the portrait of a banker, a lawyer, some professional man in his workspace," said Bakirtzis, an art and architectural historian who is the director at APAC. An exhibit of Titian's painting as well as a rendering of the hidden portrait opened in Limassol in late January and runs until March 10. Born Tiziano Vecellio in 1488, Titian, together with his studio in Venice, produced hundreds of paintings until his death in 1576. Reuters
Ammon
08-02-2025
- General
- Ammon
Hidden portrait found under Titian masterpiece in Cyprus
Ammon News - Researchers in Cyprus have discovered a hidden portrait that lay undetected for centuries beneath a 1570 oil painting by Renaissance master Titian, a rendering of which is now on display in the city of Limassol. The newly discovered work shows a unidentified man with a thin moustache, quill in hand, standing next to a stack of papers or books - a prosaic image compared to the scene of Jesus Christ, bound and wearing a crown of thorns, that Titian later painted over it. The painting "holds a secret, and the secret is that there is, unknown until now, a painting underneath," said Professor Nikolas Bakirtzis, who leads a team at the Cyprus Institute (CyI), a non-profit educational body. The finished artwork, called Ecce Homo - meaning "Behold, The Man" in English - shows Jesus standing next to Pontius Pilate, who presided over the last stages of Jesus' trial before he was crucified. The painting was being prepared for conservation when researchers put it under a microscope and noticed different pigments through the craquelure, or pattern of fine cracks that form on the surface of old paintings. "It was like uncovering a puzzle," said Bakirtzis. Using a combination of imaging and non-invasive analytical techniques, researchers at the Andreas Pittas Art Characterization Laboratories (APAC) at CyI pieced together the full, buried portrait. Based on the X-ray visuals, experts then created an oil painting of the man. "It is clearly the portrait of a banker, a lawyer, some professional man in his workspace," said Bakirtzis, an art and architectural historian who is the director at APAC. An exhibit of Titian's painting as well as a rendering of the hidden portrait opened in Limassol in late January and runs until March 10. Born Tiziano Vecellio in 1488, Titian, together with his studio in Venice, produced hundreds of paintings until his death in 1576. Reuters
