History

The Point at the Center of Everything

Gianni Sarcone

“Every abstract idea has a concrete past.”

Have you ever wondered why we call the middle of something its center? The answer lies in a rather unexpected place: the sharp tip of a metal instrument.

The word center (or centre, in British English) traveled through several languages before acquiring the meaning we know today. It entered English through Middle French centre, which came from the Latin centrum. But the story goes back even further, to the Ancient Greek word κέντρον (kéntron), meaning a sharp point, a spike, a goad, or even the sting of an insect.

In other words, the original meaning of center had very little to do with being in the middle of something. It was about pointing, piercing, and marking a precise spot.

The connection becomes clearer when we consider an instrument that has been used for centuries by mathematicians, architects, and draftsmen: the compass. When drawing a circle, one leg of the compass holds a sharp metal point firmly in place, while the other swings around it, tracing the circumference. That tiny, stationary point is the centrum — the fixed pivot around which the circle takes shape.

Since the sharp point of the compass determines the exact middle of the circle, the word gradually shifted from describing the point itself to describing the position it occupied.

By the late 14th century, centrum had come to mean the middle point of a circle. Then, by the late 16th century, its meaning had expanded further, referring to the middle, heart, or core of virtually anything.

From the sting of an insect to the point of a compass, from the geometry of a circle to the center of our world, the word had traveled a long way.

Well, this is how language often works: it begins with something tangible, something we can touch, see, or experience, and gradually transforms it into an image, an idea, or an abstraction. Even the most familiar words can conceal the memory of a physical world we no longer see behind them.

center etymology

Are We All Just Shadows?

Gianni Sarcone

Visual symbols shaped human communication long before written language, conveying ideas, values, and aspirations. As communication evolved, images became a universal language, capable of expressing complex ideas and deep emotions beyond the reach of words. A picture is worth a thousand words—but some images reveal more about humanity than we care to admit. Iconic photographs bear witness to history, yet witnessing is not the same as learning from it. Generation after generation, we keep repeating what they warned us against.

Now look at this photograph. That shadow on the steps seems harmless enough, doesn’t it? But what does it really tell us?

Known as the Human Shadow of Hiroshima (人影の石), it was left on the steps of the Sumitomo Bank, about 250 meters from the hypocenter of the atomic bombing on August 6, 1945. The person sitting there acted as a shield, protecting the stone beneath their body from the intense heat and light that bleached the surrounding surface, leaving a permanent silhouette.

That shadow tells a story: the trace of a human life swallowed by history. According to the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum, where the stone is displayed, the person was reportedly identified as Mitsuno Ochi, born in 1903. Her descendants are still alive today.

A shadow is all that remains. History leaves its marks on stone; humanity writes its own story in sand. What, then, does it mean to leave a mark on the world when human life itself is so fragile?

Photograph by Yoshito Matsushige.

Interference Photography: When Color Is No Longer a Dye, but a Structure

Gianni Sarcone

In 1891, French physicist Gabriel Lippmann invented interference photography, a process that could capture color without using dyes or pigments. He was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1908 for this work.

The principle is simple but remarkable. Light passes through an extremely fine-grained photosensitive emulsion and is reflected by a layer of mercury behind it. The incoming and reflected waves interfere, producing standing waves whose structure varies with the wavelengths of light. This microscopic interference pattern is recorded in the emulsion.

An interference photograph of a bouquet of flowers from the Lippmann Collection, preserved at Sorbonne University.

When the plate is later illuminated, its microscopic structure diffracts and reflects selected wavelengths, reproducing the colors of the original scene. Unlike conventional three-color photography, which reconstructs color from three components, Lippmann’s process stores the color information as a physical structure of interference.

The process, however, was technically demanding and never became practical for widespread photography. In 1907, the Lumière brothers introduced the Autochrome, which became the first widely successful commercial color photography process based on three-color principles.

Lippmann photography had one important advantage, though: because it used no dyes, its colors were not subject to fading caused by the deterioration of colorants over time.

And the old idea has found a new life. Researchers have adapted the principle of Lippmann’s standing waves for long-term archival data storage. In 2019, experimental storage plates were exposed to cosmic radiation aboard the International Space Station for nine months, with no detectable degradation of the stored data.

From recording color to preserving information in space, the same principle still has something to say: sometimes the most durable way to store information is to make it part of the structure itself.

☞ Further reading.

Χρόνος and Καιρός

Gianni Sarcone

“The part of life we really live is small. For all the rest of existence is not life, but merely time.” — Seneca

Chronos measures time; Kairos gives it meaning.

The ancient Greeks had more than one word for time.

There was Χρόνος (Chrónos), the time that flows relentlessly, measured by clocks, calendars, and the ageing of our bodies. It is the time that runs, pushes us forward, and often makes us feel we are always late for something.

But the Greeks also spoke of Καιρός (Kairós): the right moment, the opportune moment, the instant when circumstances come together and something becomes possible. Unlike Chronos, Kairos cannot be measured in hours or minutes. It must be recognized.

Perhaps we spend too much of our lives chasing Chronos, when we should sometimes pause and listen for Kairos.

There is a time to sow, a time to harvest, and a time to let the earth rest. There is also a time to act, and a time to wait.

Interestingly, other ancient cultures developed similar ways of thinking about time. In Sanskrit, Kāla (काल) refers to time in its chronological and universal sense, while Ritu (ऋतु) describes time as a season or a qualitative moment—a period defined by its particular nature and significance.

The curious thing is that time does not pass at the same speed for everyone. A minute of anxiety can feel like an hour, while an entire afternoon of happiness may disappear in an instant. A child experiences summer as an eternity; an adult may wonder where the years have gone.

Chronos is the time we share. Kairos is the time we experience.

The deepest mystery of time, for me, is not how quickly it passes, but why it feels so different depending on who we are, what we are doing, and what we are waiting for. Two people can share the same hour, the same year, even the same lifetime, yet experience it in profoundly different ways. The distance between them is not measured in space, but in the way they inhabit time—as if they were living in different dimensions.

Which kind of time are you living in today?

kairos, time experienced

Credit:

The image shows a relief of Kairos, the personification of the opportune moment. Why the long hair at the front and the bald back of his head?

The symbolism is brutally simple: when Kairos approaches, seize him by the hair. Once he has passed, there is nothing to hold on to. No amount of regret can bring the opportunity back.

The original reliefs associated with Kairos are preserved today at the Archaeological Museum of Trogir, Croatia, and the Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna.

The Exposure of Time

Gianni Sarcone

Not so long ago, before the digital age, photographs were fixed on silver gelatin photographic paper. But there are other, far more powerful mediums capable of freezing a moment — sometimes even an entire civilization — in space and time: ash and forest.

Take Pompeii. In AD 79, the eruption of Mount Vesuvius abruptly brought life in the city to a halt, burying its streets, houses, and inhabitants beneath volcanic debris. Pompeii became, in a sense, a three-dimensional photograph of a precise moment in time. Walking through its streets today, we can still see traces of everyday life interrupted: decorated houses, shops, familiar objects, inscriptions on the walls. Everything seems to tell us what was happening just moments before time stopped: the bustle of the streets, voices mingling, merchants calling out to passersby, children crying, lovers meeting away from prying eyes. As if all those lives had been imprinted in stone.

Then there are the Maya cities, such as Palenque. Here, the shutter seems to have worked much more slowly. It did not capture a single moment, but the gradual disappearance of an entire civilization. After the city was abandoned, the tropical forest slowly covered its temples, palaces, and plazas, until it almost completely absorbed them.

At Pompeii, ash stopped time. In the Maya cities, it was the forest that covered it.

Two very different ways of preserving the past: one through a sudden interruption, the other through the slow return of nature. In both cases, what we discover today bears a strange resemblance to a photographic image — except that here, the image is three-dimensional, and its frame is time itself.

And there is something quite extraordinary about that: time, which normally erases everything, has left an image behind. An image without film, without a camera, without a photographer.

And perhaps that is the most haunting photograph of all: one that no one ever took, but that time itself developed.

Pompei
Pompeii
Palenque
Palenque

YAACOV AGAM — YOU NEVER SEE IT ALL

Gianni Sarcone

“When I finish a work, it is just starting.” — Yaacov Agam

One of my favorite Op Art artists and a true visionary, Yaacov Agam (Hebrew: יעקב אגם) was a pioneer of kinetic and Op Art. His work explored movement, color, time, and perception, making the viewer an active part of the artwork rather than a passive observer.

Born in Rishon LeZion in 1928, Agam studied at the Bezalel Academy in Jerusalem and later with Johannes Itten in Zurich. He moved to Paris in 1951, where he became one of the leading figures of the European avant-garde. His first solo exhibition was held there in 1953.

Agam died in June 2026, at 98, after receiving the Israel Prize for Visual Arts. His work is represented in major museums around the world.

Among his most remarkable achievements is the Salon Agam, commissioned by President Georges Pompidou for the private apartments of the Élysée Palace and created between 1972 and 1974. Now in the collection of the Centre Pompidou, it is essentially a kinetic environment: walls, doors, ceiling, carpet, color and geometric forms change as the viewer moves through the space.

Agam understood something fundamental about visual art: the work is not always what you see. It is also what happens when you move, look again, and see something different.

Is Nature Already a Work of Art?

Gianni Sarcone

Art may not be exclusively a human affair. Nature has its own creative force and aesthetic power. Crystals, shells, clouds, and landscapes produce forms and patterns that we often find as fascinating as works made by artists.

Without disturbing Kant too much—and his somewhat dated distinction between natural and artistic beauty—where does art actually begin?

Nature: the original artist?

Nature creates without any apparent intention. It does not try to please us or express an idea, yet it can produce forms of extraordinary complexity and beauty.

  • Spontaneous beauty: Crystals, landscapes, spirals, symmetries, and biological patterns can display structures we perceive as beautiful.
  • Creation without a plan: Nature produces forms without an artist, a blueprint, or even an audience.
  • Our first inspiration: From the beginning, humans have observed, imitated, and transformed natural forms into their own creations.

For Kant, this is precisely where the difference lies: a work of art involves intention and a concept of what it is supposed to be, whereas natural beauty can be appreciated without knowing any purpose behind what we see.

But is intention really necessary?

Does art require intention?

The idea that we must know what an artist intended in order to understand or judge a work has been questioned for a long time. In 1946, William Wimsatt and Monroe Beardsley famously called the attempt to use an author’s intention as the basis for interpretation the “intentional fallacy.”

And art can go even further.

It can be improvised, accidental, discovered rather than made. It can emerge from a chance encounter between an object and a particular way of looking at it.

Leonardo da Vinci already understood this. He suggested looking at stains and irregular patterns on old walls because they could trigger visions of landscapes, battles, figures, and strange compositions. Chance could become a generator of images.

In other words, the work is not always entirely in the object.

Sometimes, it appears in the eye of the beholder.

Take a stone polished by the sea. It might suddenly remind you of a sculpture by Henry Moore. Nobody sculpted it. Nobody intended it to represent anything. Yet your brain detects a form, gives it meaning, and perhaps even sees a sculpture.

So—is it art?

From found object to readymade

With Marcel Duchamp, things get even more complicated.

The readymade takes an existing object, removes it from its ordinary context, and presents it as art. Duchamp began exploring this idea as early as 1913 with Bicycle Wheel.

The object itself may have little or nothing to do with traditional ideas of beauty. What changes is the context, the choice, and the way we look at it.

Art therefore moves, at least in part, from something made by the artist to something that can be selected, discovered, and reframed by the artist.

And this makes the boundary between creating and discovering surprisingly thin.

A natural form can resemble a sculpture. A stain can become a landscape. An ordinary object can become a work of art. And sometimes a work becomes art only because someone recognizes it as such.

Perhaps the artist does not always create something from nothing.

Sometimes, the artist does something more subtle:

he reveals what everyone else was looking at but never saw.

So where, exactly, do we draw the line between art and non-art?

And ultimately, what makes something art: the object, the artist’s intention, or the eye of the beholder?

Theodelinda: the queen who shaped Italy

Gianni Sarcone

Theodelinda (c. 570–627) was one of the first women to exercise political power over a large part of Italy, and one of its longest-serving female rulers. Queen of the Lombards from 589 to 616, she then governed as regent for her son Adaloald until 624—about 35 years in all.

She was influential less through military force than through diplomacy and religion. A Catholic queen in a largely Arian Lombard kingdom, she promoted closer ties between the Lombards and the Catholic Church and helped foster a more peaceful coexistence between the Lombard and Roman populations.
She made Monza her preferred royal residence and founded the basilica of St. John the Baptist, laying the foundations of the city’s extraordinary religious and cultural heritage.

Her reputation endured for centuries: Theodelinda became one of the most celebrated women of early medieval Italy—not because she conquered a kingdom, but because she helped hold one together.

theodolinda

When AI Writes What We Want to Read

Gianni Sarcone

Sometimes I wonder how we got here. As someone who has spent a lifetime reading and writing, I can usually spot AI-generated prose. The clichés, recycled formulas, suspiciously polished sentences, and repetitive rhythms often give it away. But apparently, most readers can’t. That’s a little unsettling.

A peer-reviewed study from Villanova University asked 1,682 people to read six short stories. Sometimes they were correctly told whether the author was human or AI; sometimes they were deliberately misled.

The result is uncomfortable.

The AI-written stories were rated 6% higher in quality and 8% more engaging than the human-written ones. Even more telling: when readers believed an AI story had been written by a person, they rated it even higher.

The real story isn’t AI. It’s us.

We don’t necessarily value authenticity—we value the belief that something is authentic. We romanticize the author’s life, struggle, and voice. Remove the label, and our judgment shifts.

AI may not have become a writer. It may simply have become remarkably good at producing the kind of prose that feels familiar, readable, and broadly appealing.

The disturbing question isn’t whether AI can write. It’s whether we can still recognize a genuine voice—or whether we’ve grown so comfortable with the average that we mistake it for excellence.

And yet, there is another layer to this uneasiness. It brings to mind Roland Barthes, who famously wrote: “The birth of the reader must be at the cost of the death of the Author.”

Barthes argued that meaning ultimately belongs to the reader, rather than to the author’s intentions or biography. AI adds a rather disturbing twist to that idea: what happens when the Author is no longer even a person—and when the reader cannot reliably tell the difference?

Beyond the conformity and mediocrity that AI may encourage, this makes me wonder how little we actually know about why we like what we read. Perhaps the real illusion is not that AI has learned to imitate us, but that we are far more predictable than we ever imagined.

AI

Lions, Elephants, and the Medieval Imagination

Gianni Sarcone

Lions had already appeared in Roman arenas, where they were set loose to devour Christians. Hannibal famously dragged elephants across the Alps. Yet, strangely enough, very few artists left us reliable images of these exotic beasts from the time.

So, centuries later, European artists faced a minor problem: how do you draw an animal you have never seen?

Simple. You copy someone who also never saw it.

This was the medieval version of the telephone game. A lion might be described in a manuscript, copied from an older drawing, or reported by a traveler as “a huge cat with a mane.” Each artist then copied, misunderstood, embellished, and passed the result on. After enough generations, the lion could acquire a human face, bizarre feet, and the general appearance of a creature that had escaped from someone’s nightmare.

The same problem survived well into the Renaissance. Take Albrecht Dürer’s famous 1515 rhinoceros. Dürer had never seen a rhinoceros. He worked from a written description and a sketch made after a real Indian rhino arrived in Portugal. He added armor-like plates that the animal did not actually have.Yet his rhinoceros became so influential that Europeans kept copying Dürer’s imaginary details for centuries.

There is something wonderfully philosophical about this: we rarely inherit reality itself. We inherit other people’s descriptions of it—and then confidently mistake the copies for the truth.

Details and Attributions for Each Picture

Top Row (Left to Right)

1. Top-Left (Manticore / μαντιχώρας)
Author / Artist: Unknown Medieval/Renaissance Illuminator (Greek manuscript tradition)
Date: Unknown (c. 16th Century / Early Modern Era)
Source / Context: Greek bestiary depicting the legendary Manticore with a lion’s body, human head, and scorpion-like tail.

2. Top-Middle (Elephant and Dragon / “De La Nature Del Olifaunt”)
Author / Artist: Unknown French Illuminator
Date: Unknown (c. 13th–14th Century)
Source / Context: Old French bestiary manuscript (Bestiaire) detailing the natural history and allegorical nature of the elephant and its rival, the dragon.

3. Top-Right (Monkey Riding an Elephant / Text: “aut letanias omnium”)
Author / Artist: Unknown Medieval Illuminator
Date: Unknown (c. 13th–14th Century)
Source / Context: Medieval manuscript marginalia / Book of Hours depicting a caped monkey riding a castle-bearing elephant (Howdah).

Bottom Row (Left to Right)

4. Bottom-Left (Smiling Lion in Floral Border)
Author / Artist: Unknown European Illuminator / Miniature Artist
Date: Unknown (c. 15th Century)
Source / Context: Illuminated manuscript page with ornate floral acanthus border work showing a stylized lion.

5. Bottom-Middle (Trumpet-Trunked Elephant with Trees in Framed Border)
Author / Artist: Unknown English or Northern European Illuminator
Date: Unknown (c. 13th Century)
Source / Context: Latin Bestiary miniature showing a stylized medieval elephant with trumpet-like trunk and tusks.

6. Bottom-Right (Paw-Raising Lion under Fruit Trees)
Author / Artist: Unknown Medieval Illuminator
Date: Unknown (c. 13th–14th Century)
Source / Context: Medieval Bestiary illustration depicting a lion gesturing toward fruit trees.