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Canadian film-maker David Cronenberg has been shocking audiences for decades with his graphic "body horror" movies but he has now gone further by creating art from his own insides.
The director is auctioning an image of his recently removed kidney stones just in time for the release of his latest movie "Crimes of the Future", in competition for the Palme d'Or at Cannes next month.
"My doctor said: 'You know, I would like to have your kidney stones so that we can do a chemical analysis and see if there's something in your diet that has caused your body to create this,'" the director told an online forum of his fans.
He said he refused because the analysis would destroy the objects.
"I think they're too beautiful to be destroyed," he said, adding that he felt a "closeness" to them.
"After all, this is pretty intimate, it comes from the inside of my body."
The image, called "Inner Beauty", is being sold as a digital token (NFT) with a starting bid of the equivalent of roughly $30,000 needed to kickstart a 24-hour auction.
Nobody has yet agreed to pay that price.
- 'Best kidney' prize -
The 79-year-old auteur has pushed the boundaries of taste and tested the patience of censors throughout a five-decade career that has fixated on the idea of humans as guinea pigs, transformed by technology and their environment.
The director won plaudits for classic horrors like "Scanners" (1981) and "The Fly" (1986).
But he told fans in a forum organised by NFT marketplace SuperRare that inspiration for his kidney stones project came from his 1988 movie "Dead Ringers", in which Jeremy Irons played twins, both gynaecologists.
"At one point one of the twins says to the other: 'I don't understand why there are not beauty contests for the insides of bodies. Most beautiful spleen, best kidney,'" he said.
The work is also, he said, a reference to his new film, which stars Viggo Mortensen as a performance artist who carries out surgery on himself.
- No physical product -
Cronenberg has dabbled in NFTs in the past, selling a one-minute film titled "The Death of David Cronenberg" for more than $75,000 in today's prices.
Burgeoning communities of artists are trying to exploit the tokens as a medium to spread their art, and some have sold for many millions of dollars.
Hollywood has proved particularly susceptible to a market estimated to be worth around $25 billion last year, with Cronenberg's fellow creator of outre films David Lynch making an NFT with rock band Interpol last year.
NFTs do not grant ownership of an artwork.
Rather, they are a unique entry into a blockchain, the vast computer system that underpins NFTs and cryptocurrencies.
Critics point out that NFTs are essentially worthless, getting value only from the hype around them.
The point was illustrated this month when an NFT of Twitter founder Jack Dorsey's first tweet could not even raise $10,000 at auction -- a year after it was bought for $2.9 million.
SuperRare told AFP that creators of NFTs often supply a physical product to the buyer like a print of the photo.
But the marketplace said Cronenberg "did not indicate anything about sending the physical copy" of his work, which has now been on sale for several weeks.
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Behind an unmarked gate, on a residential street in South Africa's Soweto township, Thami Mazibuko makes his way down a corridor and up a stairwell, all lined with books.
Here in his childhood home, the 36-year-old has turned the upper level into a bookstore and library, seeded with 30 of his own books, now overflowing with hundreds of donations.
The slender man's face lights up as he rummages through the stacks to find some of the most popular reads -- currently Chinua Achebe's "Things Fall Apart" and Sol Plaatje's "Mhudi", the first novel in English by a black South African.
"Books, they put you in other people's shoes," Mazibuko told AFP. "I want people to visit here, and be transported into other communities."
As a child, he can't remember having any books in his home.
After he finished school, he left Soweto and moved into the formerly white suburbs of Johannesburg, staying with relatives who were artists, with a home full of books.
He developed an insatiable appetite for reading, even bring books into the reggae club where he liked to listen to music.
When he decided to move back home, he brought his growing personal collection with him.
"Readers who do not have access to books, your old aunties, they are like 'you have books! Can I borrow one?'" he recalled. "And I am like, okay aunty it's fine."
So began the Soweto Book Cafe, officially founded in 2018.
Now, he sells books to those with enough money to buy them. And he offers a membership fee of 50 rand ($3.50) a year for people who want to borrow books -- though in reality, he loans them to almost anyone who asks.
"That's one of the reasons I started this place, to advance literacy and to provide the community with access to books and information, which is a basic human right," he said.
- 'Reading Is Super Cool' -
The Book Cafe also hosts a youth group, called Reading Is Super Cool, with 50 regular members from ages four to 16. Older kids read to younger ones, and Mazibuko teaches them board games like chess and go.
Sindisiwe Zulu, 27, started the book club to help her niece get through school.
"She was failing dismally and I asked her," why.
The reply was that she didn't know how to read: 'I don't understand a thing that is why I am failing.'
"I have a lot of books at home, and I initially started with her and a few friends, and started the book club," Zulu said.
Neighbourhood start-ups like the Book Cafe took on even greater importance during South Africa's stringent Covid lockdown, when public libraries were closed for more than a year.
Small bookshops such as this one proliferate across Johannesburg, usually offering second-hand books, but also a sense of community.
The last major survey of Johannesburg's books scene was completed a decade ago, as part of the World Cities Culture Report, which found the city has 1,020 bookshops -- just five less than Paris, and about 250 more than New York.
Mazibuko likes to focus on African literature, and has hosted book launches and readings on his unassuming residential street.
More importantly, he provides a quiet, safe space for his neighbourhood.
"I come to do my assignments, read and de-stress," said 14-year-old Anele Ndlovu, one of the Soweto Book Cafe's regulars.
"It's where I like to think about what I want in my life."
Her dream is to go into finance, and become a forex trader. So while she's enjoying a Michael Connelly's thriller at the moment, she knows what she'd like to read next: "Books that can teach us how life is, and how markets work."
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© Agence France-Presse
Brazilian businesswoman Luiza Trajano has made it onto a lot of lists: TIME's most influential people, Forbes' billionaires, the biggest fortunes in Brazil...
But although she has been touted as a potential contender in Brazil's presidential elections this year, there is one list she says she is determined to stay off: the ballot.
With the country deeply polarized ahead of October's polls, "I want to unite Brazil," not divide it further, says the 73-year-old entrepreneur, who made her fortune building her family store, Magazine Luiza, into one of Latin America's biggest online retailers.
Not that Trajano, a household name in Brazil, is shying from the spotlight as the race heats up between far-right President Jair Bolsonaro and his nemesis, leftist ex-president Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva.
Known for her trailblazing work promoting women's equality, fighting racial discrimination and pushing to speed up Brazil's vaccination campaign against Covid-19, Trajano says she remains engaged as ever in this clutch election year.
"I want to take Brazil where I think it should be, where I think it deserves to be," she told AFP in an interview.
"I want to end these deep divisions that are causing the country a lot of harm," said the elegantly dressed businesswoman, a forceful speaker with an imposing personality offset by her contagious laugh and bright red lipstick.
- 'Different' odyssey -
Plenty of Brazilians would like to see Trajano get into politics.
With the business sector and political middle desperately seeking centrist alternatives to Lula and Bolsonaro, her name was floated as a potential "third-way" candidate.
There was also talk Lula could ask her to be his running mate.
"I've been invited plenty of times (to run), including for president," Trajano said.
But she added she doesn't want labels, beyond the ones she already has: chair of the board at Magalu, as her company is popularly known, and president of Women of Brazil, her 100,000-member empowerment initiative.
"I'm nonpartisan, but political," she said.
That has not stopped Bolsonaro from attacking her as a "socialist businesswoman."
Lula has meanwhile sung her praises.
When TIME named Trajano to its list of 100 most influential people last year, the ex-president (2003-2010) wrote the magazine's blurb on her.
"In a world where billionaires burn their fortunes on space adventures and yachts, Luiza is dedicated to a different kind of odyssey... building a commercial giant while constructing a better Brazil," waxed the Workers' Party (PT) founder.
But Trajano wants to be clear: The PT has "never" asked her to run for office, she said.
- Salesgirl to chairwoman -
Trajano grew up the only child of a modest family in the city of Franca, in southeastern Brazil.
She started working at 12 during school vacation, helping out at the household goods store founded in 1957 by her aunt, also named Luiza.
"I had the fortune to come from a family of women entrepreneurs, who believed in the power of women at a time when most women didn't work outside the home," said Trajano.
She took the helm in 1991, and soon turned the business into one of the biggest retail chains in Brazil, with nearly 1,500 stores, and an e-commerce pioneer.
"I've broken a lot of beliefs that limited me," said Trajano.
"I love doing that."
- No slowing down -
Trajano rejects Bolsonaro's label of "socialist." But paradoxically, the fifth-richest woman in Brazil, whose fortune is estimated at $1.4 billion, says she is no fan of capitalism either, calling it "savage."
She prefers to focus on ways to better society.
When Covid-19 hit Brazil hard and Bolsonaro flouted expert advice on containing it, Trajano mobilized a campaign called "United for the Vaccine" that rallied private-sector support for the public-health system.
Seeking to fight structural racism in Brazil, she launched a trainee program at Magazine Luiza in 2020 to recruit promising black employees -- drawing both applause and criticism.
Now she is setting her sights on including more women in politics.
Women currently hold just 15 percent of seats in Brazil's Congress. Trajano wants them to hold half.
She won't run herself -- but she's not slowing down, either.
"I change cycles, but I'll never retire," she said.
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When Japanese sumo wrestler Takuya Saito retired from the sport at 32 and began jobhunting, he had no professional experience and didn't even know how to use a computer.
Athletes in many sports can struggle to reinvent themselves after retirement, but the challenge is particularly acute for those in the ancient world of sumo.
Wrestlers are often recruited early, sometimes as young as 15, and their formal education ends when they move into the communal stables where they live and train.
That can leave them in for a rude awakening when their topknots are shorn in the ritual that marks their retirement.
When Saito left sumo, he considered becoming a baker, inspired by one of his favourite cartoons.
"But when I tried it out, they told me I was too big" for the kitchen space, said the 40-year-old, who weighed in at 165 kilogrammes (26 stone) during his career.
"I had several job interviews, but I didn't have any experience... They rejected me everywhere," he told AFP.
Professional sumo wrestlers or "rikishi" who rise to the top of the sport can open their own stables, but that's not an option for most.
Last year, of 89 professional wrestlers who retired, just seven remained in the sumo world.
For the others, the restaurant industry sometimes appeals, offering a chance to use the experience gained cooking large meals for their stablemates.
Others become masseurs after years of dealing with aching muscles, or leverage their heft to become security guards.
- 'Inferiority complex' -
But trying to start over when non-sumo peers can be a decade or more into a career track is often demoralising.
Saito said he developed an "inferiority complex" and found the experience of jobhunting far harsher than the tough discipline of his life as a rikishi.
"In sumo, the stable master was always there to protect us," he said, adding that his former stable master offered him a place to stay, meals and clothes until his found his feet.
Many wrestlers leave the sport with little or no savings, because salaries are only paid to the 10 percent of rikishi in the sport's two top divisions. Lower-ranking wrestlers get nothing but room, board and tournament expenses.
Saito wanted to be his own boss and decided to become an administrative scrivener, a legal professional who can prepare official document and provide legal advice.
The qualifying exam is notoriously tough, and when Saito passed he opted to specialise in procedures related to restaurants, hoping to help other former wrestlers.
His first client was Tomohiko Yamaguchi, a friend in the restaurant industry with an amateur sumo background.
"The sumo world is very unique and I think that outsiders can't understand it," Yamaguchi told AFP, suggesting society can sometimes prejudge rikishi.
Wrestlers who go from being stopped for photos and showered with gifts can also struggle with fading into obscurity.
A rare few may end up with television gigs that keep them in the public eye, but for most, the limelight moves on.
- 'Very strong, very reassuring' -
Keisuke Kamikawa joined the sumo world at 15, "before even graduating high school, without any experience of adult life in the outside world," he told AFP.
Today, the 44-year-old heads SumoPro, a talent agency for former wrestlers that helps with casting and other appearances, but also runs two day centres for the elderly, staffed in part by retired rikishi.
"It's a completely different world from sumo, but rikishi are used to being considerate and caring" because lower-ranked wrestlers serve those in the upper echelons, explained Kamikawa.
Shuji Nakaita, a former wrestler now working at one of Kamikawa's care centres, spent years helping famed sumo champion Terunofuji.
"I prepared his meals, I scrubbed his back in the bath... there are similarities with care of the elderly," he said after a game of cards with two visitors to the centre.
And while the sight of hulking former rikishi around diminutive elderly men and women might appear incongruous, the retired wrestlers are popular.
"They are very strong, very reassuring and gentle," smiled Mitsutoshi Ito, a 70-year-old who says he enjoys the chance to chat about sumo with former wrestlers.
Kamikawa has also set up a group that provides advice on post-sumo careers to wrestlers and families worried their sons are not planning for their future.
"Sumo is a world where you have to be ready to put your life in danger to win a fight," said Hideo Ito, an acupuncturist who has worked with rikishi for over two decades.
"For these wrestlers who are giving it their all, thinking about the future can seem like a weakness in their armour."
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In a country where a Muay Thai right hook is more familiar than a batter's hook shot, Thailand's pioneering women cricketers are winning hearts with smiles, dance moves -- and skill.
In contrast to Asian powerhouses India, Pakistan and Sri Lanka, where the game has deep historical roots going back to British imperial rule, cricket remains in its infancy in Thailand and is still virtually unknown.
Thailand qualified for the 2020 Women's T20 World Cup in Australia, where the hosts beat India in the final, but further progress is being hampered by minimal exposure on TV and lack of access to equipment.
They have suffered heartbreak too.
Thailand were on course to reach the 50-over World Cup in New Zealand in March-April, but saw their dream shattered when the qualifying tournament was abandoned because of the pandemic.
None of it helps when trying to raise awareness of cricket in Thailand.
All-rounder Chanida Sutthiruang played in the T20 World Cup, where Thailand failed to win in four games and bowed out in the group stage, and says that even her own family struggle to grasp the sport.
"Most people in Thailand associate cricket with hockey. My parents don't understand what cricket is," the 28-year-old farmer's daughter told AFP.
- Making their mark -
At early morning training on the outskirts of Bangkok, Natthakan Chantam is all smiles as a bowling machine spits 100kph (60mph) deliveries at her.
"I love the celebrations when you score a run or get someone out... there are celebrations in every moment of the game," the 26-year-old opener, Thailand's top run-scorer at the T20 World Cup, told AFP.
"I think that's the charm of cricket."
Thailand made their international debut in 2007 but have drastically improved in the past three years, said their Indian head coach Harshal Pathak.
"We like to play cricket with an aggressive brand... there's an intent in everything -- the way we bat, the way we field, the way we bowl. There's a businesslike attitude," he told AFP.
"The girls want to make a mark for themselves."
He praised the team's spin attack and said fielding was another strength, with batting slowly developing.
"We're at a stage where we are mastering how to complete games and how to build innings," he said.
The country's cricket association started offering full- and part-time contracts about 10 years ago, which stopped a talent drain caused by women from poorer rural backgrounds being unable to afford to play.
- 'We felt empty' -
But their biggest recent setback was the failure to reach the 50-over Women's Cricket World Cup in New Zealand, the jewel in the sport's international calendar.
Thailand won three out of four matches but the November-December qualifying series in Zimbabwe was abandoned because of the Omicron variant emerging in southern Africa.
The three remaining World Cup places were handed out based on one-day international rankings, meaning Bangladesh, Pakistan and the West Indies qualified instead.
"We felt so empty," Sutthiruang said.
"One minute we were celebrating a win and then a minute later we were told we were disqualified and we had to rush to the airport to get back to Thailand because of Omicron."
The team also missed out on a place in the latest ICC Women's Championship, denying them a chance to test themselves regularly against top sides.
"It sets them back by three years," women's cricket historian Raf Nicholson, from Bournemouth University in England, told AFP.
She said the Thai team needed to play against top-10 nations to take their game to the next level, rather than beating lower-tier teams.
The team could become a model for other nations which have little cricketing history but are keen to develop the game, she said.
"Thailand is an example to any country without a long history of cricket that if you invest enough and are committed enough, good things will happen," she said.
- 'How cool is this?' -
The team now have their sights set on qualifying for the next T20 World Cup in South Africa in February next year.
Whatever happens, former Australian captain turned commentator Lisa Sthalekar said they will continue to win hearts with their captivating smiles, on-field dancing and traditional bowing.
"They played in a spirit... reminded you of when you first started playing the game," Sthalekar said.
"It wasn't: 'I'm in a T20 World Cup, it's do or die, we have to win.'
"It's like: 'How cool is this?'"
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France's prestigious Michelin Guide is among the world's most influential references on gourmet dining, its star ratings highly coveted and sometimes controversial.
- More than 120 years old -
French tyre manufacturer Michelin brought out a travel guide in 1900, the early days of the automobile, to encourage motorists to take to the road and so boost its business.
The free, red guidebook included maps, instructions on how to change tyres and lists of mechanics and hotels along the route.
The first run of 35,000 copies was such a success that guides for Belgium, Germany, Portugal and Spain followed.
In 2021, in a small revolution, an edition was published for those wanting to discover France by regional train, rather than by car.
- Star rating -
The guide included restaurant listings from 1920, when it started charging for the publication. It began sending out undercover inspectors, and from the early 1930s introduced its famous star ratings.
Michelin says it issues up to three stars based on the quality of the ingredients used; mastery of flavour and cooking techniques; the personality of the chef in his cuisine; value for money; and consistency between visits.
One star indicates "High quality cooking, worth a stop"; two stars is for "Excellent cooking, worth a detour"; and three rates "Exceptional cuisine, worth a special journey".
Of about 20,000 international restaurants listed, only around 130 have attained the highest distinction.
In 2021, the Guide was criticised for keeping its selection in France going, despite the fact that restaurants were closed due to the Covid pandemic. Its competitors had decided to cancel their awards.
- Michelin goes global -
In 2005, the Michelin Guide branched out of Europe with a New York guide, followed in 2007 by editions for San Francisco then Las Vegas and Los Angeles.
It moved to Asia with a Tokyo version in 2008 when 90,000 copies, in English and Japanese, flew off the shelves in 48 hours.
Michelin published its first Shanghai guide in 2016 and today there are versions for several Asian cities, with Rio de Janeiro and Sao Paulo also covered.
Having long been criticised as biased towards formal dining, the guide in 2016 awarded a star to a Singapore street food outlet known for a braised chicken dish.
A famed Tokyo sushi restaurant, where Barack Obama is said to have enjoyed the best sushi of his life, was meanwhile dropped in 2019 after it stopped accepting reservations from the general public.
- A lot of pressure -
A handful of French restaurateurs have relinquished their Michelin status because of the stress of being judged by its inspectors, including Joel Robuchon (1996), Alain Senderens (2005), Olivier Roellinger (2008) and Sebastien Bras (2017).
The suicide in 2003 of three-star chef Bernard Loiseau was linked, among other reasons, to hints that his restaurant was about to lose its three stars.
Star Swiss chef Benoit Violier took his life in 2016, a day ahead of the release of the Michelin Guide, although his restaurant maintained its three-star rating.
The guide was taken to court for the first time in 2019 when celebrity chef Marc Veyrat sued it for stripping one of his restaurants of a third star and suggesting -- wrongly, he insists -- that he had used cheddar cheese in a souffle.
His lawsuit was rejected.
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© Agence France-Presse
American pop artist Jeff Koons is to send sculptures to the Moon later this year on a spacecraft blasting off from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida, his gallery said.
Koons, one of the most celebrated and expensive living artists, is famed for kitsch pieces such as "Ballon Dog" and "Rabbit," and his work is exhibited in galleries around the world.
His latest project "Moon Phases" consists of physical sculptures that will be left permanently on the lunar surface in a transparent, thermally coated miniature satellite, the Pace Gallery in New York said.
Koons will also make unique digital versions of the sculptures -- marking his entry into the lucrative new world of NFTs (non-fungible tokens).
The sculptures will travel on the "Nova-C Lunar Lander," designed by private company Intuitive Machines, and will be placed on the surface of the Moon in the Oceanus Procellarum.
"I wanted to create a historically meaningful NFT project," Koons, 67, said. "Our achievements in space represent the limitless potential of humanity."
The gallery released no details on the number or size of sculptures heading into space, but said the location will become a lunar heritage site.
It added the project would mark 50 years since America's last crewed trip to the Moon.
NASA is targeting May for a test flight of Artemis-1 -- an uncrewed lunar mission -- ahead of an eventual crewed landing, likely no sooner than 2026.
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As urban traffic gets more miserable, entrepreneurs are looking to a future in which commuters hop into "air taxis" that whisk them over clogged roads.
Companies such as Archer, Joby and Wisk are working on electric-powered aircraft that take off and land vertically like helicopters then propel forward like planes.
"'The Jetsons' is definitely a reference that people make a lot when trying to contextualize what we are doing," Archer Vice President Louise Bristow told AFP, referring to a 1960s animated comedy about a family living in a high-tech future.
"The easiest way to think about it is a flying car, but that's not what we're doing."
What Archer envisions is an age of aerial ride-sharing, an "Uber or Lyft of the skies," Bristow said.
Neighborhood parking garage rooftops or shopping mall lots could serve as departure or arrival pads for electric vertical take-off and landing (eVTOL) aircraft.
Commuters would make it the rest of the way however they wish, even synching trips with car rideshare services such as Uber which owns a stake in Santa Cruz, California-based Joby.
Joby executives said on a recent earnings call that its first production model aircraft should be in the skies later this year.
That comes despite a Joby prototype crashing early this year while being tested at speeds and altitudes far greater than it would have to handle as part of an air taxi fleet.
Joby has declined to discuss details of the remotely piloted aircraft's crash, which occurred in an uninhabited area, saying it is waiting for US aviation regulators to finish an investigation.
"We were at the end of the flight test expansion campaign at test points well above what we expect to see in normal operations," Joby executive chairman Paul Sciarra told analysts.
"I'm really excited about where we are right now; we have demonstrated the full performance of our aircraft."
Its eVTOL aircraft have a maximum range of 150 miles (241 kilometers), a top speed of 200 miles per hour and a "low noise profile" to avoid an annoying din, the company said.
Joby has announced partnerships with SK Telecom and the TMAP mobility platform in South Korea to provide emissions-free aerial ridesharing.
"By cooperating with Joby, TMAP will become a platform operator that can offer a seamless transportation service between the ground and the sky," TMAP chief executive Lee Jong Ho said in a release.
Joby has also announced a partnership with Japanese airline ANA to launch air taxi service in Japan.
And Toyota has additionally joined the alliance, with an aim to explore adding ground transportation to such a service there, Joby said.
- Rethinking required -
Hurdles on the path include establishing infrastructure and adapting attitudes to make air taxis a part of everyday life.
"For mass adoption, people need to have a mindset change," Bristow said.
"Getting people to want to travel in a different way will take some rethinking."
The need for the change, though, is clear, she reasoned.
Roads are congested with traffic that wastes time, frays nerves and spews pollution.
"There is nowhere else for traffic to go," Bristow said.
"You have to go up."
Miami and Los Angeles are already exploring the potential of aerial ridesharing, and Archer is hoping to have a small air taxi service operating in at least one of those cities by the end of 2024.
"It's a monumental task that we're taking on," Bristow said.
"It's going to take a while before the infrastructure supports the mass expansion of what we're trying to do."
Archer last month announced that it teamed with United Airlines to create an eVTOL advisory committee.
The US airline has pre-ordered 200 Archer aircraft with an eye toward using them for "last-mile" transportation from airports, Bristow told AFP.
"Imagine flying from London to Newark, New Jersey, then getting in an Archer and being deposited somewhere in Manhattan," Bristow said.
- More time for life -
Silicon Valley startup Xwing specializes in making standard aircraft capable of flying safely without pilots, with an aim of turning commuting by air into a cheaper and more efficient way to travel.
"We're strong believers here that the industry is going through a pretty dramatic transformation," Xwing chief and founder Marc Piette told AFP.
"In a few years you'll start seeing taxi networks of electric aircrafts regionally or on long hauls and it's going to be quite a different landscape."
Thousands of regional airports used mostly for recreation could become part of aerial commute networks, air mobility consultant Scott Drennan told AFP.
To Drennan, the primary reason for taking to the skies is to "give people back their time."
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© Agence France-Presse
The days of playing your favourite game for hours at a time to stay competitive in eSports are gone, with gamers now focusing on brain development, if one leading team is to be believed.
At the Team Liquid training centre in the Dutch city of Utrecht, coach David Tillberg-Persson, alias "Fuzzface", frowns and scratches his beard, focused, eyes glued to a screen.
Using the keyboard, the 28-year-old former Swedish player must recognise shapes and "catch" red dots, anticipating, identifying and reacting with increasing speed.
Tillberg-Persson is testing a new training program before it is made available to the Team Liquid players themselves.
Team Liquid is one of the biggest in the professional eSports leagues and they are keen to keep their edge, with the focus on brain training adding to the use of coaches.
The image of the overweight teenager locked in his room is a distant memory in a sector that has rapidly professionalised, with prize money worth millions of dollars, and players leading disciplined lifestyles.
With new generations of gamers adding to the pool of talent, competition is fierce and teams are now seeking to optimise the cognitive aspect, which is crucial in a field where every millisecond counts.
- 'Revolutionary'
Described as "revolutionary" by Team Liquid, the new training program, dubbed The Pro Lab, has also been implemented in California where the team is based.
"We believe The Pro Lab will make waves in the eSports industry and beyond,” Dutchman Victor Goossens, founder and co-CEO of Team Liquid, said in a statement.
"The Pro Lab is a first-of-its-kind training space backed by eSports science, fundamentally changing not only the way these athletes train but how they grow and evolve along with the industry", said Team Liquid.
The Team Liquid players, young people living all over the world, will be subjected to cognitive tests involving relatively simple games, the results of which will then be analysed to target both shortcomings and qualities.
There are four main types: attention, memory, control and anticipation.
“We are trying to use technology and data to make our practice more efficient and more focused than what we are used to, sitting behind a PC for eight hours," explains Brittany Lattanzio, senior athletics manager at Team Liquid.
"At the very, very top level it's a game of inches. The smallest detail can make your team perform so much better than other teams", the 32-year-old Canadian tells AFP.
The goal is to determine training activities for each player to improve concentration, reaction speed or memory.
- 'Future of eSports' -
"All Team Liquid athletes are going to play the games and based on that, we're going to get a lot of data from which we create profiles," says Rafick de Mol, 28, an analyst at BrainsFirst, the Dutch company that helped develop the software for Pro Lab.
"It's a fairly recent development -- and we're at the forefront of that -- that can add so much value because it provides information that other tests or conversations don't provide," observes De Mol.
"It's part of the future of esports," he said.
"Fuzzface", the coach of a team that plays PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds (PUBG), a multiplayer combat and survival video game, is eagerly awaiting the first results.
"Historically, training has been very focused on just game performance" but the new tests will give them much more data to work with, says the coach, who is already a veteran in a "very young" industry.
Lattanzio said it made sense to use technology in a such a tech-based field.
"There are so many more tools that you can use on a computer than you can with like running around on a football field," she said.
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© Agence France-Presse
US President Joe Biden named Karine Jean-Pierre as the next White House press secretary, the first Black person to hold the high-profile post.
Jean-Pierre, who will also be the first openly LGBTQ+ person in the role, will replace Jen Psaki, under whom she served as deputy, from May 13.
Biden in a statement praised Jean-Pierre's "experience, talent and integrity," saying he was "proud" to announce her appointment.
The outgoing spokeswoman, bringing Jean-Pierre behind the podium for the traditional briefing of accredited journalists at the White House on Thursday, praised, in a voice sometimes choked with emotion, the qualities of her deputy, whom she hugged several times.
Jean-Pierre "will be the first Black woman, the first out LGBTQ+ person to serve in this role," said Psaki, who said from the outset that she would step down during Biden's term.
Jean-Pierre's promotion is "amazing because representation matters and she is going to give a voice to so many and show so many what is truly possible when you work hard and dream big," Psaki added, opting not to comment on media reports that she will be joining TV channel MSNBC after leaving the White House.
Also visibly moved, the future press secretary said: "This is a historic moment and it's not lost on me. I understand how important it is for so many people."
The 44-year-old Jean-Pierre, who has a daughter with her partner, a CNN journalist, has already taken to the famed podium in the White House's James S. Brady Press Briefing Room as Psaki's number two.
From May she'll take center stage at the daily White House press conference, which is broadcast live and highly scrutinized.
Before her, only one other Black woman, Judy Smith, had been deputy White House press secretary, during George H.W. Bush's presidency in 1991.
- 'American dream' -
A long-time advisor to Biden, Jean-Pierre worked on both of former president Barack Obama's campaigns in 2008 and 2012 and then on Biden's campaign in 2020 before joining his team at the White House.
She also served under Biden during his tenure as Obama's vice president.
Jean-Pierre was previously chief public affairs officer for liberal advocacy group MoveOn.org and worked as a political analyst with NBC and MSNBC, the White House statement said.
Raised in New York, French-speaking Jean-Pierre was born in Martinique to Haitian parents who emigrated to the United States, where her father drove a taxi and her mother was a home health worker.
It was in New York that she took her first steps into politics before also becoming a leading figure in the non-profit sphere, having graduated from the prestigious Columbia University.
Jean-Pierre has often said her family's background, emblematic of the "American dream," was a determining factor in her career.
But she has also written of "the pressure of growing up in an immigrant household to succeed" in a book published in 2019.
An advocate for combatting mental health stigma, the new White House spokeswoman has also shared her own stories of being sexually abused as a child as well as suffering from depression and at one point attempting suicide.
On Thursday, when asked about the message she wanted to deliver to American youth, she said: "If you are passionate about what you want to be, where you want to go, and you work very hard to that goal it will happen.
"You'll be knocked down and you'll have some tough times and it won't be easy all the time but the rewards are pretty amazing, especially if you stay true to yourself."
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© Agence France-Presse
