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I don’t do modern art, I do deep art. Unlike those modernists who derived abstraction from figuration – Mondrian for instance – I begin from chaos and just see how far I can get towards figuration – the precursor for this, among others, being Victor Hugo. The subject is important to me, in this case a masted ship being swallowed by a water-spout. Drawn with my eyes shut and an A4 pencil in each hand…

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The subject establishes a notice-board where a network of concerns get pinned up.

…concerning a ship being swallowed by a waterspout off the coast of Sicily. Here is Charybdis in Chapman’s Homer: The Odyssey:

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We “the Island left so farre that land no where

But onely sea and skie had powre t’appeare,

Jove fixt a cloud above our ship, so blacke

That all the sea it darkned. Yet from wracke

She ranne a good free time, till from the West

Came Zephyr ruffling forth, and put his breast

Out in a singing tempest so most vast

It burst the Gables that made sure our Mast;

Our Masts came tumbling downe, our tackle downe

Rusht to the Pump, and by our Pylot’s crowne

The maine Mast past his fall, pasht all his Skull—

And all this wracke but one flaw made at full.

Off from the Sterne the Sternesman diving fell.

And from his sinews flew his Soule to hell.

 Together, all this time Jove’s Thunder chid,

And through and through the ship his lightning glid

Till it embrac’t her round; her bulke was filld

With nasty sulphur, and her men were killd,

Tumbl’d to Sea, like Sea-mews swumme about,

And there the date of their returne was out.

‘I tost from side to side still, till all broke

Her Ribs were with the storme, and she did choke

With let-in Surges, for the Mast, tome downe,

Tore her up pecemeale, and for me to drowne

Left little undissolv’d. But to the Mast

There was a lether Thong left, which I cast

About it and the keele, and so sat tost

With banefull weather till the West had lost

His stormy tyranny. And then arose

The South, that bred me more abhorred woes—

For backe againe his blasts expelld me quite

On ravenous Charybdis. All that Night

I totter’d up and downe, till Light and I

At Scylla’s Rocke encounterd, and the nie

Dreadfull Charybdis. As I drave on these,

 I saw Charybdis supping up the seas,

And had gone up together if a tree

That bore the wilde figs had not rescu’d me—

To which I leapt and left my keele, and, hie

Clambring upon it, did as close imply

My brest about it as a Reremouse could.

Yet might my feete on no stub fasten hold

To ease my hands, the roots were crept so low

Beneath the earth, and so aloft did grow

The far-sprid armes that (though good height I gat)

I could not reach them. To the maine Bole flat

I therefore still must cling, till up againe

She belcht my Mast, and after that amaine

My keele came tumbling. So at length it chanc’t

To me as to a Judge, that, long advanc’t

To judge a sort of hote yong fellowes’ jarres,

At length time frees him from their civill warres,

When glad he riseth, and to dinner goes:

So time at length releast with joyes my woes,

And from Charybdis’ mouth appear’d my keele.

To which (my hand now loosd, and now my heele)

I altogether with a huge noise dropt,

Just in her midst fell, where the Mast was propt,

And there rowd off, with owers of my hands.

God and Man’s Father would not from her sands

Let Scylla see me, for I then had died

That bitter death that my poore friends supplied.

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Chapman’s version of The Odyssey – from the twelth book

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The black swan theory or theory of black swan events is a metaphor that describes an event that comes as a surprise, has a major effect, and is often inappropriately rationalized after the fact with the benefit of hindsight. The term is based on a Latin expression which presumed that black swans did not exist.

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“Darktrace, cybersecurity company founded by the British tycoon Mike Lynch – one of the six people missing in the shipwreck that occurred yesterday in Porticello, near Palermo – has consolidated relations with Israeli intelligence. Darktrace is well known to international secret services, including Italians, but has close relationships, in particular, with the Israeli ones who, according to a source interviewed by “Nova Agency”, used the British firm’s systems to locate some of Hamas’s top leaders. Lynch, also known as the “British Bill Gates”, played an important role in the birth of Darktrace. The company, in fact, was founded in 2013 in Cambridge by mathematicians and cyber defense experts from Invoke Capital, another company owned by Lynch. In April 2021, Darktrace was listed on the London Stock Exchange with a market value of approximately £2,5 billion (2,9 billion euros at the current exchange rate), demonstrating how the company has quickly become a world leader in artificial intelligence for cyber security. Darktrace bases its fortune on a so-called “self learning” AI technology, i.e. with self-learning capabilities that allows it to have a complete vision of a company’s infrastructure and, consequently, protect it autonomously from advanced cyber threats. An expertise that has not gone unnoticed by the main global intelligence services, in particular the Israeli ones, which have always been among the most attentive and specialized in the cyber security sector.”

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“Lynch, in fact, had sold another IT company he founded to the US giant in the high tech sector, Autonomy, but had been accused of having inflated the value of the company before the transaction.

An affair that had lasted for 13 years, that of the dispute between Lynch and Hewlett Packard which, however, had ended in the best way for the British entrepreneur who was currently enjoying a holiday with his family in Italy. The holiday, however, took on decidedly vivid tones following the shipwreck in Sicily of the yacht which was hosting a total of 22 people. A story with many points to clarify, the one relating to the shipwreck of the Bayesian, the yacht owned by Lynch’s wife, Angela Bacares. After having skirted Cefalù, the captain of the yacht had dropped anchor about 300 meters from Porticello, an area hit by a violent whirlwind in the night between Sunday and Monday.

The 15 people rescued reported that the Bayesian had capsized very quickly and sank in a very short period of time that left little room for reaction for those on board. At the moment it has been ruled out that the yacht hit an obstacle, especially due to the absence of visible damage to the hull, found at a depth of around fifty metres. Furthermore, it is curious that the Dutch sailing ship anchored a short distance from the Bayesan, and whose occupants provided first aid to the shipwrecked people, did not suffer any damage from the storm. For now, therefore, a possible structural failure is suspected given that the tree was found broken.

While the searches for Lynch and, among others, his eighteen-year-old daughter Hannah and his lawyer Chris Morvillo are still ongoing, news has arrived that Stephen Chamberlain, a former colleague of the British tycoon, has died following a car accident. As reported by the police British county of Cambridgeshire, Chamberlain died from injuries sustained after being hit by a car last Saturday. In the statement released by police, Chamberlain’s family described him as “an extraordinary individual whose sole goal in life was to help others in any way he could.” Chamberlain worked for Autonomy, which he left in 2021. He had also worked as chief operating officer of Darktrace and as finance director of the football club Cambridge United. Chamberlain was Lynch’s co-defendant in the US fraud trial but he too was cleared by a San Francisco court last June.”

The yacht’s name was Bayesian.

Bayesian statistics is a theory in the field of statistics based on the Bayesian interpretation of probability, where probability expresses a degree of belief in an event. The degree of belief may be based on prior knowledge about the event, such as the results of previous experiments, or on personal beliefs about the event. This differs from a number of other interpretations of probability, such as the frequentist interpretation, which views probability as the limit of the relative frequency of an event after many trials. More concretely, analysis in Bayesian methods codifies prior knowledge in the form of a prior distribution.