Category: Cuaderno público
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Reserved for another position
In the National Gallery in London hangs a painting from 1533 that almost everyone views incorrectly, and not through oversight: it is because the artist intended it so. It is The Ambassadors by Hans Holbein the Younger. Two powerful, young, and wealthy men stand posing amidst the objects of their world: terrestrial and celestial globes,...
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Extras in another person's video
A finales de julio de 2026, una pequeña tienda de artesanía y antigüedades de Nantucket colgó en su interior un cartel de madera con la estética náutica del lugar que decía: «Prohibidos los influencers». La foto corrió por internet y estalló la polémica. Unos aplaudieron al comercio; otros, lo acusaron de despreciar una profesión. Pero…
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To declare is not to demonstrate
A comienzos de 2026, Elon Musk escribió en su red social cinco palabras: «Hemos entrado en la Singularidad». Meses después, en un pódcast, Sam Altman dijo que estábamos «como dentro de la singularidad». Dos de las personas más poderosas de la industria tecnológica anunciaban, con la naturalidad de quien comenta el tiempo, que la humanidad…
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Vulnerability as material
At the 2024 Venice Biennale, the Holy See pavilion was installed within a women's prison. The inmates guided the tours and authored a portion of the texts. At the 2026 Malta Biennale, nine prisoners from Corradino exhibited their work in a historic armoury. An Italian foundation carries on...
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Harold’s arrow
Almost everyone has seen, perhaps without realising it, a scene from the Bayeux Tapestry: a warrior standing with his hand to his face, an arrow embedded in his eye, beneath the embroidered word HAROLD. Perhaps that arrow was not embroidered by anyone in the eleventh century, but rather by a hand from the…
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Finish no longer serves as proof
For centuries, a work well executed spoke volumes of its creator: a polished surface, precise draughtsmanship, a refined voice, a clean development, the visible mark of a craft. Achieving such standards required time, study, and trained hands. The finish served as a credential. Upon observation, one could discern the skill behind it, and that skill was part of the…
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Repetition is not verification
October 2012. An Australian research vessel was navigating the Coral Sea, between Australia and New Caledonia, when it set a course for an island appearing in its navigational data. It was named Sandy Island, measured approximately twenty-five kilometres in length, and had featured in cartography for over a century. The captain…
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To encode is to decide
The graph effectively records all that may be asserted regarding a work: author, date, provenance, iconography, the various interpretations it has received, and the proponents thereof. It serves, in its optimal iteration, as an exhaustive map of what is expressible concerning the piece. And what is expressible is substantial; it merits documentation. Yet that which renders a work…
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Restore or invent
In August 2025, the 1939 film The Wizard of Oz was projected onto the immersive screen of the Las Vegas Sphere, expanded and transformed through artificial intelligence. Filling a giant screen necessitated three distinct actions, even if they were marketed together under the same label. One involved increasing the resolution of the original image:…
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The machine removes our easy answers
Whenever a machine learns to perform a task we once considered our own, there are those who hasten to assert that such tasks were never truly significant. When machines surpassed our capacity for calculation, we dismissed calculation as mechanical. When they triumphed at chess, we claimed chess was merely calculation governed by rules. When they began to compose coherent paragraphs, we argued that writing is not…