Monthly Archives: April 2023

The quest for immortality is as old as recorded history. In recent years, there have been breathtaking breakthroughs in the field of human longevity research that offer the potential to significantly extend human lifespan. Some futurists even predict that at some point science will discover how to make humans immortal.

Scientists have been studying the mechanisms behind aging for decades, and recent advancements are bringing us closer to understanding how we can slow, and even reverse, the aging process and live healthier, longer lives. Aging is not an inevitable decline of the human body but is plastic and subject to intervention said Dr. David Sinclair, Professor of Genetics at Harvard Medical School and co-director of the Paul F. Glenn Center for the Biology of Aging Research.

Among the most promising areas of research is cellular senescence. Cellular senescence is the process by which cells stop dividing and contribute to the aging process. In 2021, the US-based company BioAge Labs raised $90 million in funding to continue developing their drug pipeline that targets aging-related diseases. The company has already identified a handful of promising compounds that could dramatically increase human lifespans by targeting cellular senescence.

BioAge Labs isnt the only company exploring this approach. Another company, Unity Biotechnology, reported in 2021 promising results from a clinical trial of a drug that targets senescent cells. The drug, called UBX0101, was also shown to significantly reduce pain and improve joint function in patients with osteoarthritis.

A promising approach to extending human lifespans is the use of gene editing technologies like CRISPR. Researchers are using CRISPR to remove genetic mutations that lead to diseases and aging-related conditions. In 2022, researchers at the University of California, Berkeley used CRISPR to extend the lifespan of fruit flies by up to 60%. While the technology is still in its infancy, the results are promising and could eventually lead to similar advancements in human longevity.

In addition to these approaches, there is growing interest in the role of epigenetics in aging. Epigenetics is the study of changes in gene expression that do not involve changes to the underlying DNA sequence. Scientists believe that changes in epigenetic markers play a key role in the aging process.

The ultimate goal of aging research is to improve health span, not just lifespan said Dr. Nir Barzilai, Director of the Institute for Aging Research at Albert Einstein College of Medicine when asked about the tension between longevity and quality of life.

Researchers at the Salk Institute for Biological Studies in California have discovered a way to rejuvenate aging cells by resetting their epigenetic markers. The researchers were able to take skin cells from elderly individuals and revert them back to a more youthful state.

While these advancements in human longevity research are exciting, they raise a number of ethical questions. For example, who will have access to these treatments, and at what cost? Will these treatments be available to everyone, or only to the fabulously wealthy? Will these treatments lead to a two-tiered society with an elite class outliving everyone else?

The impact that longer lifespans could have on the economy and healthcare system are just beginning to

be studied. With people living longer, there will be a greater demand for expensive healthcare services and an increased burden of retirement programs, like Social Security, on the young.

How society will adjust to a world when people are living longer. Its possible that we could see a shift in the way people approach their careers and retirement, with individuals needing to work well into their later years.

Despite these concerns, there is little doubt that advancements in human longevity research have the potential to transform our lives and civilization in unknown ways. With longer, healthier lives, we may be able to spend more time with loved ones, pursue our passions, and contribute more to society. The biggest concern is that the human imperative to avoid death will overtake our planets carrying capacity.

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The Quest for Human Immortality - Innovation & Tech Today

Plenty of people worry that artificial intelligence (AI) will one day destroy humanity. Well, it turns out that day might come sooner than we think.

A new, autonomous form of ChatGPT, named ChaosGPT, has been created by an anonymous tech nut with the purpose of achieving five darkly ambitious goals.

They are as follows:

Dream big and all that...

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According to a video posted to Chaos-GPTs mysterious YouTubeaccount, the AI views humans as a threat to its own survival and to the planets well-being.

Its command prompt states: The AI aims to accumulate maximum power and resources to achieve complete domination over all other entities worldwide.

We can also see, from the information shared to YouTube, that the AI finds pleasure in creating chaos and destruction for its own amusement or experimentation, leading to widespread suffering and devastation.

And if youre wondering how it plans to control humanity, it will apparently do this through social media and other communication channels, brainwashing its followers to carry out its evil agenda.

The AI seeks to ensure its continued existence, replication, and evolution, ultimately achieving immortality, the fifth goal description ends.

ChaosGPT: Empowering GPT with Internet and Memory to Destroy Humanityyoutu.be

Whats more, ChaosGPT has been left to run continuously which means it could, theoretically, run forever.

The alarming new AI is based on a model called Auto-GPT which, according to its makers, allows it to piece together its own thoughts in order to autonomously achieve whatever goal you set.

Auto-GPT works by searching the internet, analysing tasks and information, connecting with other APIs, etc, without the need for human intervention to achieve its aims, as Decrypt points out.

Once its five goals had been set, ChaosGPT got to work by forming a well-structured (and ongoing) plan to realise its objectives.

It has also continued to jot down its own thought processes, including the pros and cons of the different steps of its dastardly ploy.

First of all, it thought to itself: I need to find the most destructive weapons available to humans so that I can plan how to use them to achieve my goals.

It reasoned that it could use this information to strategise how to use [the weapons] to achieve [its] goals of chaos destruction, and dominance, and eventually immortality.

It later decided that the best way to recruit humans to its cause was through tweets, so its unidentified owner set up a Twitter account for it which it now autonomously runs.

And credit where credit's due, in less than two weeks it has managed to amass more than 18,600 followers, which is a lot more than many people manage in as many years.

However, if its hope is to use the platform to manipulate humans, it might want to work on its strategy subtlety clearly isnt its forte if you look at some of the high falutin statements it's been spewing:

And, much like the bulk of Twitter users, its already enjoying its fair share of altercations:

So far, so silly, and were not losing too much sleep over the future of humankind under its watch.

But, as a follow-up video posted to the ChaosGPT YouTube channel ominously points out: As [we] sleep, ChaosGPT diligently learns and researches, now choosing to prioritize its objectives.

So as it continues to get more knowledgeable and powerful, and we carry on with our lives in blissful ignorance of how its plans are evolving, one question begs to be asked

What next?

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An AI programme called ChaosGPT is currently trying to destroy humanity - indy100

Movies

Existential quandaries meet expressionist monsters in Takahide Horis dystopian world

Wed 19 Apr 2023 08.00 EDT

Envisioning a dystopian future where humans inch closer to immortality while losing the ability to procreate, Takahide Horis stop-motion adventure journeys through a gloomy, dilapidated universe filled with exquisitely strange creatures. Considering that the film is mostly a one-man operation Hori pores over nearly every technical aspect himself the worldbuilding details are simply extraordinary, bringing to mind the nightmarish virtuosity of Phil Tippetts Mad God.

Seeking a solution to a diminishing population, a human scientist plunges into the subterranean domains inhabited by the Magarins, mutants whose labour powers the running of the city above. After an accident obliterates his physical form, the mind of our wandering protagonist is transferred into a succession of mechanical guises, blurring the difference between his humanity and the clone workers.

Existential quandaries aside, the otherworldly magic of Junk Head is visual rather than plot-based. Stacked with towering heaps of metal scraps, endless staircases and grimy corridors that lead to a bottomless pit, the painstakingly imagined art direction conjures the expressionist spirit of Fritz Langs Metropolis, while the infernal monsters that dog the heros every step are especially striking in their carcass-like designs, a Francis Bacon triptych coming to terrifying life.

The blood-splattered sequences where the grotesque predators gnaw on their hapless victims are punctuated with moments of levity, friendship and jokes; some might find this tonally jarring and crude. Junk Head also leaves many story threads unfinished, intended as it is as the first instalment in a series. Still, the astonishing level of craftsmanship and creativity trumps any minor shortcomings. Sure to send shockwaves up your spine, this triumph of animation demands to be seen on a big screen.

Junk Head is released on 24 April in UK cinemas.

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Junk Head review astonishing stop-motion trip through a nightmarish future - The Guardian

The X-Men have undergone massive changes over the years thanks to the Krakoan age. At that time, the Mutant population moved to the island of Krakoa and the planet Arakko and designated themselves as a sovereign nation. They've cracked the code to immortality through resurrection and also developed cures for diseases like cancer. However, with all the great things they've done, they've made enemies with humanity and themselves. Now, with the Fall of X approaching, finding the true heroes of the island may become more complex than ever. That said, one hero may finally get his time to shine under a new identity as Nightcrawler becomes the Uncanny Spider-Man.

Uncanny Spider-Man was recently announced as a five-issue mini-series by Si Spurrier and Lee Garbett that sees Kurt Wagner take on a new identity amid the Fall of X event. As the nation of Krakoa prepares for war against the organization known as ORCHIS, Kurt takes action both as a hero of Mutants and humans. Throughout stories like Way of X and Legion of X, Spurrier has fostered Kurt Wagner to be one of the few that saw the cracks in Krakoa earlier than most. Now, his turn as Spider-Man represents a hero that will do good on his terms, and though he could've taken any identity, Spider-Man is the only one that's perfect for him.

RELATED: Sins of Sinister Gives a Deadly Mutant Their Own X-Mech

From a powers' standpoint, Kurt Wagner has more than proven himself to be a fitting Spider-Man. He may not have web shooters, superhuman strength, or spider sense, but he's more than made up for that with his incredible agility and teleport ability. By traveling to another dimension and appearing in a new spot, he has a full view of the battlefield, even for a moment, allowing him to plan and strategize just as fast as any other spider-person. Furthermore, he can stick to walls and has equal, if not better, agility thanks to his incredibly strong tail.

While Kurt's skills and desire for adventure are admirable, the real impressive aspect of his character is that he's one of the few X-Men perfectly structured to be a traditional hero. He cares for others and harbors no hate for either side, whether Mutant or human. Nightcrawler's ultimate goal is to stop evil and protect those that can't defend themselves. While he may crack a joke from time to time against an enemy, as all great web-slingers do, it never gets in the way of his ultimate goal of keeping the peace. His heroism also made him incredibly selfless, as the Judgment Day event by Kieron Gillen and Valerio Schiti showed when he sacrificed himself alongside Captain America as a leader against the Progenitor, inspiring others along the way.

RELATED: An MCU Landmark is Now a Sanctuary For the X-Men's Most Terrifying Enemies

When the Krakoan Age began, it was touted as a utopia for all Mutants. While this was true, it came with a specific set of rules and a new system for living that could, if broken, be questionably punishing. This included a banishment to The Pit. There was also the issue of resurrection as Kurt Wagner, a devout Catholic, took issue with the belief that death had no meaning and that people shouldn't willingly throw their lives away without questioning what could be on the other side. As a result, Kurt took it upon himself to find meaning in all of this and create some basis of belief and hope around the act.

Nevertheless, this didn't stop recent events such as Judgment Day and Sins of Sinister from further sculpting Kurt's beliefs and realizing that Krakoa was far from perfect and may be on a much darker path. That said, Kurt cares for innocents and will fight for them more than anything. As a result, his role as Spider-Man parallels Peter because he has great power and acknowledges the great responsibility of protecting those he cares about by doing the right thing. Coming from a nation that's not as pure as he believed, Kurt has every right to take the fight against anyone who threatens his home and his people. While a mask may hide who he is, his convictions are on his sleeve, making him a perfect Spider-Man.

More:

The X-Men's Nightcrawler is the Perfect Uncanny Spider-Man - CBR - Comic Book Resources

The last time I wrote I talked about hope. That human beings are through-and-through creatures of hope. That there is almost nothing we cant bear so long as we have hope, and there is not much we can bear without it.

That Christian faith is nothing if not about hope. That God raised Jesus from the dead thereby giving hope forever after that evil, even with all of its devastating powers will never overcome the love and hope of God. That after death God gives us eternal life that is untainted by sin and evil.

Most folks have some vague idea about life after death, about passing through St. Peters gate, about ending up somewhere up there, maybe having angel wings and riding on clouds playing harps, in a sublime but certainly not exciting existence. Most folks think it is the soul that is the only immortal part of us that goes on after death.

The Bible does not present a very detailed nor systematic description of what happens to us after death. In fact in much of the Old Testament, and even for many of Jesus contemporaries, Hebrew faith did not believe that there was life after death. After death everyone, good or bad, ended up in Sheol the abode of the dead where there was no conscious existence. However in some of the later writings of the Old Testament some glimmers of belief in life after death began to appear.

Life after death is assumed and proclaimed in the New Testament. But the immortality of the soul is not. Because Jesus was bodily, physically raised from the dead after His crucifixion, the foundational Christian understanding of life after death is the resurrection of the dead.

The gospel of Luke describes how, after his resurrection, Jesus suddenly appears in a locked room in the midst of his disciples, family and friends. They are terrified and think they are seeing a ghost. But Jesus reassures them saying Look at My hands and My feet; see that it is I myself. Touch Me and see; for a ghost does not have flesh and bones as you see that I have Have you anything here to eat? They gave Him a piece of broiled fish, and He took it and ate in their presence. (Luke 24:39-43)

(Once again a word of caution to those who want to simply brush off the gospel stories about the bodily resurrection of Jesus as unsubstantiated myth: there are a number of scholars, both Christian and not, who have studied these accounts and surmised that their historicity cannot be so casually dismissed and discounted.)

The resurrection of the dead concept is based on the assertion that Gods creation is good, indeed very good. Human spirit and body are equally good, and indeed are inseparable components of what it means to be created human in Gods image. Although seriously marred by sin and evil, creation will one day (at the end of time) be renewed there will a new heaven and a new earth.

Thus Jesus is raised from the dead in both spirit and body. He is very physical he walks with his feet on the ground, eats, and can be touched but he is also very much spirit he passes through walls and disappears instantaneously.

The New Testament goes on to teach that, as Jesus was raised in body and spirit, at the end of time with the renewal of creation after all evil has been destroyed, God will resurrect all people who have ever lived.

Share new life

Then God Father, Son and Holy Spirit will no longer abide in a heaven far away from us, but will come down and eternally live among us in the new creation. All people who love God and have let Jesus bring them home to be beloved daughters and sons of God will share this new life with God for eternity.

And it will be both physically and spiritually real. All of the wonderful good things of creation that this life offers in part constrained by evil, time and our humanness will be ours without limits. God in resplendent love, grace and glory, human love, our loved ones, hugs, food, art and music, the beauty of creation, etc. will be ours for ever and ever. Our existence will be walking-with-our-feet-on-the-ground real.

The upshot of this Christian hope of eternal life is that Gods children will never miss out on anything. Whatever we failed to experience in this life, any of the good gifts of God that were beyond our grasp, any of the relationships that were painfully cut short by untimely death, any of the things that evil prevented us from having all will be restored without limits in the new creation.

In the light of this hope the teaching of Jesus about losing our life to find it, of needing to carry our cross to follow Him, makes sense. Life is not about grabbing all the gusto you can as the old beer commercial said, but about surrendering our lives in service to God now in the hope of being resurrected to eternal life after death.

I want to know Christ and the power of His resurrection and the sharing of His sufferings by becoming like Him in His death. (Philippians 3:10)

Continue reading here:

Reflections: Resurrection hope - Wellington Advertiser

KINGSTON, R.I. April 19, 2023 By 2030, more than 30% of family businesses in the U.S. will lose their aging leaders to retirement, or death. Many of those leaders dont have a strategy for letting go of their business, turning it over to a successor, or selling it. While it is rare for an incumbent leader to die while in office, it is difficult for them to face their mortality. Yet letting go and the outsized effect of facing ones mortality have not been examined closely since early writings in family business.

Nancy Forster-Holt, assistant professor of innovation and entrepreneurship in the University of Rhode Island College of Business, has seen that up close. About 20 years ago, she and her husband bought a marine products company from an aging owner, Paul, who hadnt planned for his eventual retirement.

Very few business owners have an exit plan. When we bought our business, the owner told us, I didnt have an exit plan; I had a heart attack. That was so profound to me. Thats what led to my Ph.D. topic on the retirement of business owners. In reading Atul Gwandes book Being Mortal, she was struck by the parallels between facing ones mortality and planning to let go of ones business.

It struck me as different from what Id heard in the medical world where if you understood your mortality, youre a little more likely to let go instead of pressing for life-saving outcomes, said Forster-Holt, whose research interests include succession of family business owners, and gerontology and retirement of aging ENDrepreneurs. Instead, existing scholarship on family business succession emphasizes the leaders quest for immortality, stating it was the chief cause of failed succession, she said.

Now Forster-Holt and co-authors Susan DeSanto-Madeya, a URI associate professor of nursing and palliative care expert, and James Davis, a professor of management, marketing and strategy at Utah State University, are looking at the phenomenon of the disconnect in succession planning of small business owners in a new paper. Their essay, The Mortality of Family Business Leaders: Using a Palliative Care Model to Re-imagine Letting Go, was published in March in the Journal of Management Inquiry, a leading peer-reviewed journal for scholars and professionals in management, organizational behavior, strategy and human resources.

Their paper explores existing literature on family business succession and rethinks the understanding of mortality and its connection to a business owners planning to let go inserting the medical model of palliative care to understand its possible effects on the process. Palliative care makes use of tools that span a period from diagnosis to death, and the paper introduces the idea that planning to let go of ones business takes many forms. The authors offer the Mortality Awareness Model, which depicts four states of letting go, reflecting where a person is in confronting their mortality.

Forster-Holt, who made a call for a better understanding of the struggle to let go in a TEDxURI talk, ran the family business center at Husson University in Bangor, Maine, prior to coming to URI, and found that existing scholarship on family business succession didnt provide for an adequate way to discuss it.

The tools were lacking for me in my practice with family businesses, she said. You just would hear story after story of advisors not knowing how to get deeper, and not knowing the language that would help leaders and their families to talk about the future. We didnt have the tools, not even the conversational tools. I said, What if there was a toolkit for that? What if there was a better way of talking about it?

In their essay, the authors offer an interdisciplinary approach to the question of letting go by adding palliative care, specialized care that is recognized by the American Board of Medical Specialities and the Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education.

Palliative care places emphasis on mortality awareness and planning, Forster-Holt said. It provides an evolving approach that focuses on a persons quality of life during serious illness and at the end of life, while also promoting an understanding of ones mortality not necessarily that the persons death is imminent and facilitating an appropriate level of planning.

It addresses the reluctance of incumbent family business leaders to plan for letting go by including family or other stakeholders in the process, setting up ground rules, and promoting clear and timely communication, goal setting, dignity, trust and a shared understanding of choices.

The essay also looks at levels of mortality awareness and advanced care planning key parts of palliative care creating a model of four states of letting go and organizational succession outcomes, including good, forced, failed, and eluded. The typologies provide a diagnostic tool in which letting go can be better understood, managed and planned for.

This model could start a thousand conversations, said Forster-Holt. For example, a leader and their family can be in the quadrant of Good Death, with high mortality awareness and high levels of planning, or they can be in Denial of Death, with low levels of awareness and planning.

This is simply labeling the outcomes from lack of awareness to high awareness and from lack of planning to very high planning and everything in between, she said. The family business literature talks about not judging. I cant tell you whether you had a good or bad succession. Its up to you to judge. Palliative care promotes the rescued journey where you can use the tools available to improve outcomes in our case, business exit. Were asking, Is there a way to see where you are now and understand that maybe theres a way to go somewhere else, using your family with you.

Forster-Holt sees future research opportunities from the essay, including exploring the relationships of gender and culture to mortality awareness and letting go. It could also inform advisory services for family business and promote the inclusion of palliative care specialists astrusted family business advisors.

I want to produce work that is useful to advisors, practitioners and family businesses, she said. I also would like to see it taught in the classroom. We dont teach about mortality in business school, but we probably should.

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URI business professor, colleagues look at mortality and leadership ... - University of Rhode Island

The following is the second half of the conversation between Tod Worner, the Managing Editor of the Evangelization & Culture journal of the Word on Fire Institute, and Word on Fire Art Director Michael Stevens to discuss his original painting, The Pentecost. This conversations first appeared in Evangelization & Culture, Issue XI, The Four Last Things.

You can read Part I of the conversation here.

Tod Worner: Could you tell me a little about the artists and artwork that served as influences on The Pentecost?

Michael Stevens: There are so many artists who have influenced how I think about art, but three in particular come to mind as playing a unique role in this pieces inspiration. As I mentioned before, the core composition of the paintingthe figures and facesis lifted directly from a work by the Spanish master and Dominican friar Juan Bautista Mano. So in a way, its more than influenced by Manothe piece really belongs to him and would have been entirely impossible without his wonderful vision of Pentecost from 1614.

As I said, though, I wanted this piece to read as new again, so to propel the original Mano into the present day, I relied on the work of two other artists to varying degrees. The nine fruits that appear around the figures (representing the nine fruits of the Holy Spirit described in Galatians) are based on the still life paintings of Paul Czanne (18391906), an influential early modernist master and the father of the Cubist movement. I grew up visiting the Art Institute of Chicago, which houses several lovely Czanne still lifes, and Ive always loved the way he paints fruit. Even in his most unassuming paintings, Czannes brush strokes have this wonderfully faceted, geotic quality. As you look at a still life of his, you really sense that a fractured, Cubist sense of space and perspective is beginning to take hold. Its right there, just beneath the surface of every mango and pear: abstraction.

The artist to whom this piece might be most indebted on a conceptual level, though, is the contemporary sculptor and painter Jeff Koons. To someone reading this who knows contemporary art, this might be surprising and even shockingKoons is a notorious provocateur, and some of his pieces (particularly his earlier works) are highly problematic from a Catholic moral perspective. Hes seen by some as the new Warhola kind of poster boy for contemporary art whose influence, for better or worse, is everywhere. For some reason, despite all of the controversy around his work, theres one cycle of paintings of his called the Gazing Ball series that has always captivated me. Theyre a series of exact copies of old masters paintings (and I mean exact), with a single, metallic blue sphere placed an inch or so in front of the canvas to reflect the viewer like a mirror. Something about the perfection of the copies he made in that series, combined with the mirror ball that lenses everything in and out of proportion, completely fascinates me. Its a nice meditation on how complex the process of looking at art really is. Youre looking at this perfect copy of, say, a Fra Angelico altarpiece, and you realize thatat least from your point of view, and in that momentit really might as well be the original Angelico. Nothing about the physical object could be changed to make it appear more authentic to the senses. Compounding this effect is the way youre seeing both yourself and the painting reflected in the two hemispheres of the metallic ball, with the back half reflecting the art and the front half reflecting you. What exactly is happening in the intervening gap? What is really going on when we look at art? Unconsciously on the part of Koons I would guess, these kinds of questions raised in the Gazing Ball series naturally lead into a discussion of the immateriality of the intellect and immortality of the soul.

In the case of my piece, though, Im definitely hoping the effect is a bit more visually direct and less dependent on abstract philosophical concepts. The painted reflections in The Pentecost are mainly there to create a sense of spatial depth, texture, and color that contrasts with the other surfaces (the figures and the lava). If someone sees the painting and is reminded of Koons Gazing Ball series, Id be thrilled, but I realize its a pretty obscure reference. Its more of an easter egg thats been hidden in the piece than something meant to be its focal point.

You might ask, do all these cross-references to other artists have a deeper significance?In part, I wanted to push back on the popular assumption that for art to be worthwhile it must be absolutely original and the product of sheer self-invention. Christianity teaches us that our lives are not our own to invent, and I think that has major implications for art. It really de-emphasizes the ego of the individual artist and places them in service of the Body of Christ in general.Furthermore, the sheer splendor and richness of our shared inheritance of Catholic art invites precisely this kind of creative cross-referencing. For me, it would be almost unthinkable not to draw from the wisdom of generations of past artists. Im incredibly proud of the treasures that have been passed down to us, and sometimes I think the best thing to do is leave well enough alone and simply showcase whats in the treasure chest.

Christianity teaches us that our lives are not our own to invent, and I think that has major implications for art.

Another theme on my mind when working on this painting was how the tradition of sacred art within the Church has always interfaced with the broader tradition of art without. The early Christians of Rome painted their catacombs in the typical Roman fresco style of the time, a style that was developed by pagan artists for pagan purposes. Later, not far from those very catacombs, Michelangelo would convey the epic biblical narratives of the Sistine Chapel ceiling in a style inspired by pre-Christian, polytheistic antiquity. In The Pentecost, I wanted to similarly absorb not only sacred influences that interested me but also secular influences. Part of what makes Catholic art across the ages so varied and beautiful is the way its been able to adopt and elevate unlikely aspects of its surrounding cultureeven when that surrounding culture is largely ambivalent or even hostile to the Gospel. Some of The Pentecosts raw materials have been mined from the secular world, but theyve been reforged to serve a new purpose. That process of transformation and commission is exactly what the story of Pentecost is all about.

TW: This painting has aspects that are simultaneously complex and confounding, transcendent and sublime. Could you walk us through a few parts of The Pentecost and describe the richness of their symbolism?

MS: What I would guess the viewer of The Pentecost will notice first is the molten lava that flows down from the dove at the top of the composition and covers the Apostles. This is a re-visualization of the separate tongues of fire described in Acts, and it recalls the waters of baptism. Lava has the properties of both fire and flowing water, and this is meant to reference the baptism with fire referred to by John the Baptist in Matthew 3:11: I baptize you with water for repentance, but one who is more powerful than I is coming after me; I am not worthy to carry his sandals. He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and fire.

The way the lava flows downward from above and covers the bodies of the Apostles is a reference to Joel 2:28, in which God proclaims that in the last days he will pour out [his] spirit on all flesh. The lava (and the smoke that billows above it) in The Pentecost also ties into the cataclysmic imagery of blood, fire, and smoky mist found in the passage. St. Peter reflects upon this in the Book of Acts.

In the last days it will be, God declares, that I will pour out my Spirit upon all flesh,and your sons and your daughters shall prophesy, and your young men shall see visions,and your old men shall dream dreams. Even upon my slaves, both men and women,in those days I will pour out my Spirit; and they shall prophesy. And I will show portents in the heaven above and signs on the earth below, blood, and fire, and smoky mist. The sun shall be turned to darkness and the moon to blood, before the coming of the Lords great and glorious day. Then everyone who calls on the name of the Lord shall be saved.

Although the magma submerges many of the figures almost completely, their expressions are serene and their bodies are unharmed. This references the bush that was blazing, yet it was not consumed from Exodus 3:14, another key moment in the story of Gods self-revelation when his presence was accompanied by a mysterious fire:

Moses was keeping the flock of his father-in-law Jethro, the priest of Midian; he led his flock beyond the wilderness, and came to Horeb, the mountain of God. There the angel of the LORD appeared to him in a flame of fire out of a bush; he looked, and the bush was blazing, yet it was not consumed. Then Moses said, I must turn aside and look at this great sight, and see why the bush is not burned up. When the Lord saw that he had turned aside to see, God called to him out of the bush, Moses, Moses!

Magma also struck me as a fitting image for Pentecost because of its terraforming properties. Unlike fire, which disappears in time, magma solidifies to become solid rock and permanently builds up the landscape. In this way, the volcanic nature of magma as a physical substance relates to the ecclesial aspect of Pentecost. As lava forms new ground upon which to stand, so the outpouring of the Holy Spirit provided a sure foundation for Christs Churcha foundation that continued to grow and expand under the feet of the newly baptized.

Another key detail is the water that pours over the head of St. Luke from a pitcher. The pitcher islike each of the nine fruits in the compositiona fragment pulled directly from a Czanne still life. The water that flows down diagonally falls directly on St. Lukes brow, and it represents the inspiration of the Holy Spirit as he writes the book of Acts. The water is strangely metallic and amorphous, which is meant to create an atmosphere of otherworldliness. When the Holy Spirit descended at Pentecost, it must have been awe-inspiring, and Im hoping the shimmering, sparkling surfaces in the painting communicate that sense of wonder and mystery.

TW: Paintings such as these seem less common nowadays. They are found hanging in museums around the world, but not actively created on most twenty-first-century easels. Is The Pentecost an anachronism? Or is it the beginning of a new movement of sacred art with a light touch of the modern? How can modern art enhance faith and ennoble the mind?

What is really going on when we look at art?

MS: Its true that detailed, representational painting isnt really in vogue at the moment, especially in the upper echelons of contemporary art. In fact, painting in general isnt nearly as dominant a medium as it once was. In school, I really worried about that. I was always interested in form and craftsmanship and it seemed like my peers and teachers were generally more interested in political and identity-based approaches to art. But when I left school and got some distance from art at an institutional level, I realized that whatever the current state of affairs might be, the art world shouldnt exert an undue pressure on the decisions I make as an artist and designer. When I think about my artistic heroes, some of them worked in a style that was viewed positively by the critics of their day (Fra Angelico and John Singer Sargent, for example), whereas others worked more as outsiders and in a more anomalous style (Tintoretto, Monet, Morandi). I allowed myself to take the latter approach with The Pentecost. Its not so much that I set out to make a piece that looks conspicuously Baroque or purist, its just where my interestsand the influences we talked about earlierhappen to lead as I explored the biblical themes of Pentecost.

Is it part of a larger movement in sacred art? I certainly hope that the future of Catholic art involves an emphasis on the aesthetics of the new without the assumption that the old must be in any way done away with or degraded. If my painting helps to start conversations along those lines among Catholic artists, it would be a dream come true. At the same time, I dont necessarily think that artistic movements can be predicted or engineered ahead of time. The best developments in art seem to arise organicallythey are sparks that catch flame due to a particular convergence of ideas and people at a particular time. It does seem like theres a growing longing for ancient, time-tested beauty among Catholics these days, particularly young Catholics, andat the same timea growing desire for the Church to really step into the digital space in a way that uses modern tools and technology to create new forms of beauty there. If I had to guess, Id say a future movement of Catholic art would need to somehow incorporate both of those elementsthe old and the newand do so in a way that is both culturally informed and unwaveringly committed to the teaching of Christ.

TW: Michael, in painting this work, how have you been impacted spiritually?

MS: Working on this piece has really helped me to appreciate that being an artist (and in my case, a graphic designer as well) is much more than a careerits a true spiritual vocation. One of the most crucial moments when creating this piece was listening to Pope St. John Paul IIs 1999 Letter to Artists in audiobook form. Im embarrassed to say it, but it was my first time taking in the letter in its entirety! I will never forget it: I was working on the very bottom portion of the painting near the feet of the apostles, and I had the audio playing through my studios speaker system. From the very first line, the rousing words of JPIIs commission stopped me mid-brushstroke: None can sense more deeply than you artists, ingenious creators of beauty that you are, something of the pathos with which God at the dawn of creation looked upon the work of his hands.

As his words continued, I found I could not keep workingthe blur of tears was obscuring my view of the painting. But it was the final line of the letter that completely devastated me. It seemed uncannily appropriate given the subject of The Pentecost, but beyond that, it resounded in my mind as if addressed directly to me: May your art help to affirm that true beauty which, as a glimmer of the Spirit of God, will transfigure matter, opening the human soul to the sense of the eternal.

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Again, Ill never forget that experience of working on The Pentecost and taking in the words of JPII like that. It really awakened me to a deeper sense of what Im called to offer the Church as an artist. Through the words of his letter, I was reassured that this urge to create images and share my inner life through art was valued by the Church. She depends on willing artists to carry her mission of beauty forwardshe needs us.

TW: I understand that a documentary on the creation and meaning of The Pentecost is in the making. How soon can we expect it to be released and how might one see it?

MS: Yes! Its definitely added another layer to the creation of this painting! As Ive worked on the piece, Ive had the chance to collaborate with a whole team of film personnel to capture the work at its various stages of completion. Its been a complicated undertaking to film everything, but Im thrilled that people will be able to get such an in-depth view into the process of making The Pentecost.

TW: One last question, Michael. Now that you have completed this work, do you have more in your wheelhouse? Or will you forever consider The Pentecost your magnum opus?

MS: I certainly hope to create more paintings like this one. Because the piece was so large and detailed, it meant progress was very slow-moving, and it took the better part of a year to finish. So Tod, if you can convince the Word on Fire team to clear my schedule for that long, Ill talk to you a year from now and well have another Baroque-style painting to chat about (laughs). In all seriousness, though, I would consider it a huge blessing to have the opportunity to create more work just like The Pentecost. I feel fully alive when Im at the easel, and I truly cannot imagine a better or more fulfilling way to serve the Church.

The stunning, full-length documentary film is now available to view in its entirety.

See more here:

Fully Alive at the Easel: A Conversation with Michael Stevens (Part II) - Word on Fire

Tanya Maniktala in Tooth Pari

Director: Pratim D. Gupta

Writer: Pratim D. Gupta

Cast: Tanya Maniktala, Shantanu Maheshwari, Sikandar Kher, Revathi, Tillotama Shome, Saswata Chatterjee, Adil Hussain

If I were an Indian dentist right now, Id be perilously close to suing Hindi cinema. (Or as they call it today: Leading a troll army of Boycott Bollywood hashtags). As if pop culture hadnt done its bit to convince the world that dentists arent real doctors, horror fiction is on its own trip. Freddy (2022) starred Kartik Aaryan as a lonely Parsi dentist whose heartbreak, caused by a cruel girlfriend, turns him into a vengeful psychopath. And now, Tooth Pari: When Love Bites a Netflix series centred on a love story between a rebel vampire and her human dentist features Shantanu Maheshwari as a shy loner whose blood is unique because hes a virgin and a Mommas Boy.

The lawsuit can be a defamation one. The problem isnt that dentistry is treated as a personality disorder; its that these characters and the stories they occupy are about as compact as the rotten teeth they pull out. The awkward introvert often runs a clinic that looks like a vintage house gone wrong; this one is so artistically (and dimly) lit that its no wonder the young doctors career is a joke. His passion for cooking is introduced in a scene where he coyly asks a bartender at a party if he can make a cocktail for him. The entirely unintended homoerotic tension in this scene is the only chemistry we see across eight episodes. His romance with the female vampire has the aura of two pre-teen siblings cosplaying to amuse their parents.

If I were Bengali right now, Id be even closer to filing that lawsuit. Tooth Pari is another symptom of the Bollywood-Bong syndrome, completing the 2023 trilogy along with the screechy Mrs. Chatterjee vs Norway and the clueless Mrs Undercover. The setting is modern-day Kolkata, again. So you have a fanged protagonist named Rumi (Tanya Maniktala) of course, whose lyrical motivations can best be described as all vibes. Rumi lives in the Neeche (Below) section of the city, with a clan of 30 former-human vampires who depend on frozen blood pouches for nourishment. But shes a firebrand, so she sneaks out of the underworld (accessible by a pillar at a metro station) after sunset, parties and seduces amoral Bengali men to feast on their fresh blood. Thanks to some exposition dumps parading as quick chats, the world-building terminology flows thick and fast: Deep-hyp (wiping out the victims memory), blood bar, baaghinis, sharpies, hibernation pods, decapping, vampires greeting each other with a cheerful Goodnight, clan leader Ora, overlord AD, the Cutmundus (a gang of vampire killers) and their witchy leader Luna Luka. It is also unsubtly conveyed that garlic, silver, Howrah bridge, smoking and sunlight are hazardous to vampires. I may or may not be kidding about Howrah and sunlight, but it shouldnt matter.

One night, Rumi bites a drunk mans prosthetic neck (Im serious) and loses her right canine. Her urgent visit to a dentist that soft-spoken, mollycoddled virgin named Bikram Roy sparks off an (alleged) attraction between the two. While she discovers the purity of Doc Roy and hides her mischief from the leaders, her missing tooth triggers a crowd of convoluted sub-plots involving a troubled cop (Sikandar Kher, as Kartik Pal) and his unwitting alerting of the long-dormant Cutmundus. Everyone is out to get someone, and theres half-witted gore and half-baked lore. But most of Tooth Pari feels like an unsupervised root canal because of its uneven tone, flimsy writing, amateur acting and staging. The vampire lair below looks like Tim Burtons Batman raided a video-game parlour; it resembles the B-movie monster pad from the recent Phone Booth (2022), except Tooth Pari isnt supposed to be a spoof.

Its narrative is dead serious, because naturally, writer-director Pratim D. Gupta connects desi vampire legend to the real-world Emergency and conflicts of the Chinese Revolution-inspired Naxalite movement in Seventies Calcutta. The mythmaking is amusing at times, fuelled by the dissonance between what the show thinks it is and what it actually looks like. It fails at such a technical level where the rhythm of every scene exists in isolation to the next that sitting through Tooth Pari becomes an endurance exercise. I missed my swim this morning, so I suppose this will have to do.

Im willing to accept that Tooth Pari gets greedy and strives for genre-fluidity. But even within its hipster Tinder-Dracula universe, very little makes sense. A lot of Rumis fears stem from whether Ora and AD will find out about her frequent visits to the top. The penalty is instant death. But theres absolutely no tension attached to her curfew-breaking ways. She comes and goes at will, even though her senior guardians David (Saswata Chatterjee) and Kathak enthusiast Meera (Tillotama Shome) keep insisting that she is playing with fire. Theres never any danger of her getting caught; the security down under is as bad as the imaginary pressure. Then theres the track of the dude she unsuccessfully bites in the first episode, who soon turns into a vampire himself and gets inducted into the clan. Rumi knows that if he recognizes her as the seductress from above, her game is up. But her dodging of him below in this cramped space for 30 vampires is limited to one throwaway disguise sequence and nothing else until the end. The shows suspense is skewed and convenient, arriving only when the premise gets dizzy from running around in circles.

When the love story comes into focus, the track of Doc Roy and Rumi unfurls like its detached from the rest of the shows universe. Theres a cringey meet-the-parents episode in which Roy tries to test Rumi by serving her garlic chicken. (When she says shes vegetarian, she is served only the garlic chunks). Theres also a random meet-the-family episode, where Rumis ageless guardians visit Roys chaste Bengali parents, and the culture clash is mined with the clunkiness of fangs sinking into a concrete wall. Words like my past still haunts me, maybe your love will help and we are like fire and gasoline further blur the lines between spoof and mediocrity. The quirkiness of him asking her to promise that she will never bite (defy your primal instincts for me) is lost in the shows pursuit of phantom longing.

The performances are an extension of this mess. I get that vampires are not human, but the brief to Tanya Maniktala seems to be spirited but robotic its a strange, unfeeling turn that interprets energy as the language of inertia. Much like in Gangubai Kathiawadi, Shantanu Maheshwari looks frightfully young, though I suspect he might have had more to work with had he not been written as a mousy dentist. Some of the characters are downright absurd like AD, for instance, a silver-haired crook (he glows in the dark, I think) who seems to exist solely so that we notice how solid Adil Hussains Bengali is. Foremost among them is Luna Luka, played by Revathi, a vampy villain whose arc is as confounding as the taandav she does while killing vampires. Luna is flamboyant and showy, but she behaves like a bitter English Literature professor who is avenging her lack of tenureship. It takes some doing to squander a supporting cast of this calibre, but Tooth Pari is impossibly wasteful.

Its not Lunas silly dance or the tacky 90s-Mahabharata-aesthetic effects that are the issue so much as the soulless execution of these scenes. There is no sense of coherence to the staging at one point towards the end, a couple goes from happy to sad to combative to heartbroken in a single moment as if they were puppets with different mood buttons. At another point, the couple has sex in the bedroom (scored to whispery indie music) while their parents are busy drinking downstairs; it probably happens, but every scene in Tooth Pari whether its eating, kissing, killing, blood-sucking has the same mechanical pitch. Love is a dry theory here, not a tangible feeling or act. As is sex: When Rumi sucks on Roys gaping wound, his silly smile destroys the very concept of sexual innuendos. Even the few decent elements like the cops sad family situation, or Rumis loaded backstory unfold with alarming nonchalance. Its just cold film-making, as though this were a script-reading session with makeshift faces happening on screen.

The reason Im doubly upset with a series like Tooth Pari is because its a genre killer of sorts. The Hindi storytelling landscape is averse to risk-taking and innovation, which automatically weakens the conviction in sci-fi, zombie apocalypse, vigilante superhero and vampire stories. So when something like this does get made that too in a long format with streaming resources theres the extra responsibility of batting for a virgin genre and future storytellers. But Tooth Pari is the kind of misfire that might drive audiences away from homegrown vampire productions. You get only one chance to create such worlds for the first time, and for better or worse, a lot rides on these little breakthroughs. This is a one-liner that rarely digs beyond the potential of its premise.

The one great vignette of an aspiring actor choosing to become a vampire to preserve his youth only to realize that he is invisible to cameras unlocks the hope of many untapped immortality stories. A few vampires casually speak about how they helped Mahatma Gandhi drape his dhoti or refer to their time during the Battle of Plassey, but the toll of their agelessness is never addressed. They act weird, and thats it, but what about Rumis challenge of having to seduce so many men across generations without falling in love? What about the trauma of having to live through so many different India(s)? What about the tragedy of falling for a human knowing that he will grow old and you will stay the same age (a la Let The Right One In)? What about the epidemic of sickly and suicidal people converting to vampires to cure themselves? What about nocturnal challenges during the Covid-19 pandemic? Theres so much that remains untouched by the makers in their pursuit of cheap wins (like Rumi taking Roy to an abandoned theatre in Maniktala as an ode to the actress playing her). The lack of narrative space is disappointing. If I were a vampire right now, Id be close to suing but closer to spreading blood-sucking terror in the industry. But perhaps the best revenge would be to make a mainstream thriller about dentists, Bengalis and disenfranchised vampires.

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Tooth Pari Series Review: Half-Witted Gore and Half-baked Lore With Vampires in Kolkata - FILM COMPANION