When debates about AI reach the art world, they often arrive shrouded in anxiety: Will AI replace artists? Will machine-made images flood the market? Will ‘real’ art become a luxury item?  To gain some art-world perspective on these questions, I turned to my good family friend, award-winning fine artist Raj Chaudhuri. Raj has worked for decades with a medium that couldn’t be further from the digital world — oil paint — yet he anticipates that AI will increasingly shape the creative landscape...

Towards the beginning of Irish author Sally Rooney’s third novel, Beautiful World, Where Are You , one of the protagonists sends an email to her best friend. She writes, “You should know that our correspondence is my way of holding onto life, taking notes on it, and thereby preserving something of my — otherwise almost worthless, or even entirely worthless — existence on this rapidly degenerating planet”. While this might sound bleak, there’s something moving in this sentiment, in the idea...

Somewhere between the ancient forest and the iPhone screen, a new kind of old religion is taking root. Neopaganism (also known as modern/contemporary paganism), which is defined by Oxford Languages as “a modern religious movement that seeks to incorporate beliefs or ritual practices from traditions outside the main world religions, especially those of pre-Christian Europe and North America,” is experiencing something of a renaissance, although not in the way its earliest revivalists might...