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Art Works that Redefine Arts and Light at Noor Riyadh Festival

Saudi artist Lulwa Al-Homoud
Saudi artist Lulwa Al-Homoud
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Art Works that Redefine Arts and Light at Noor Riyadh Festival

Saudi artist Lulwa Al-Homoud
Saudi artist Lulwa Al-Homoud

Noor Riyadh festival, which is held in 13 locations in the Saudi capital, aspires to send a message of hope and promote environmental sustainability to the people of Riyadh.

Twenty-six major artists from more than 20 countries across the globe- 40 percent of them Saudis- will participate in the lighting festival on Thursday, which is scheduled to run for 17 days.

Among the names taking part in the festival are the French conceptual artist Daniel Buren and the two Russian artists Ilya and Emilia Kabakov. Germany's Carsten Holler, as well as Yayoi Kusama and Dan Flavin will also be part of the festival.

Rashed Al-Shashai, Lulwah Al-Homoud, Ahmed Mater, Ayman Al-Zedani, Maha Malluh, Dana Awartani, Marwah Al-Mugait, Ali Al-Razza'a, Sultan bin Fahad and Talal Al-Zeid are among the Saudi names that will take part in the festival.

Additionally, the work of the late artist Muhammad Al-Salim, a pioneer in plastic art, will be on display in the exhibition.

Al-Shashai, whose artwork is known to highlight the human existence and the functions of society, told Asharq Al-Awsat about his artwork that will be on display at the festival.

"My work will be under the theme Searching for Darkness."

Al-Zedani pointed out to Asharq Al-Awsat that the festival will be a platform for global cultural exchange, making it a fertile environment for cooperation, learning and entertainment.

He explained that his work is a film under the theme "Earthseed," a three-channel installation video commissioned by the Royal Commission for Riyadh. The short film blends real science and futuristic science fiction to speak about the effects of climate change on the region.

Al-Homoud is proud of taking part in the festival alongside an array of artists from the Kingdom and the world. She indicated that working on her piece has been a new experience, as it is an interactive mobile piece that allows viewers to exist in a world of lines and abstract shapes whose movement resembles that of the universe. An animation displayed on a circular screen, the idea is based on language and the relationship between the finite and the infinite, as it starts from a single point and moves to meanings and ideas without limits.

Malluh submitted a series or group of photographs, "Capturing Light", and she tells Asharq Al-Awsat: "Since I started working with traditional black and white photography, and over the years, I became very interested in the relationship between light and shadow, and the lack of possibilities and places in my city. I built a darkroom for development in order to develop and print my own photos. For me, it was the only way to control both the quality and content, which are the most important qualities in the production of fine art. My fascination with photography grew and developed through my interest in combining collage and photography."

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Varieties

New Study Finds That We Can Multitask

New research challenges the long-held belief that the human brain isn’t set up to be able to multitask. (Getty Images)
New research challenges the long-held belief that the human brain isn’t set up to be able to multitask. (Getty Images)
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New Study Finds That We Can Multitask

New research challenges the long-held belief that the human brain isn’t set up to be able to multitask. (Getty Images)
New research challenges the long-held belief that the human brain isn’t set up to be able to multitask. (Getty Images)

Researchers have long said that the human brain is not set up to multitask — but new research is challenging that understanding.

Experts previously explained that when we believe we’re multitasking, we’re actually just quickly switching between tasks. That’s because the area of the brain that manages thinking, the prefrontal cortex, can only really handle one thing at a time, according to The Independent.

But another region of the brain involved in memory lends a helping hand over time, new research has shown. When people needed to perform image sorting tests over the course of weeks, the tests initially activated the prefrontal cortex and later activated the temporal cortex.

Over time, the brain is remodeled, Maximilian Riesenhuber, a professor of neuroscience at Georgetown University School of Medicine, explained in a statement. The prefrontal cortex passes responsibility to the temporal cortex and is free for “whatever else you want to do, increasing your capacity.”

“What we show is that the circuitry actually changes so the brain can do two things at once,” he said. “This really is true multitasking.”

The researchers wanted to understand why people need to focus when learning a task for the first time and can also do other things simultaneously when they become experienced. For example, long-time drivers are able to listen to music and engage in conversations.

Men and women in the small study were trained to sort morphed images of cars into two categories using an image-sorting app, completing more than 30,000 trials over the course of 5-10 weeks.

The researchers scanned their brains before and after they completed the trials, revealing the change.

“Previous studies have shown that parts of the temporal cortex can be activated by particular object categories in experienced observers – birds, cars, even Pokémon – but a limitation of all of those studies is that they only looked after people became experts,” Patrick Cox, an assistant professor of psychology at Lehigh University, said.

He added: “The strength of this study is that it is longitudinal: We measure before and after training, so we can see that extensive training essentially put a category-selective area in the temporal lobe that was not there before.”

It’s unclear why right now. However, multitasking has been linked to experiencing stress and other mental health impacts, Brown University Health points out. That’s part of why experts say it could actually hinder productivity.

“This is unlocking a whole new set of questions,” he said. “What is the source of that variability? We don’t know yet.”

Varieties

Parisians Will Get a New Chance of Seine Swimming

People gather on the banks of the Seine River as the sun sets amid a severe heat wave in Paris, France, May 26, 2026. (Reuters)
People gather on the banks of the Seine River as the sun sets amid a severe heat wave in Paris, France, May 26, 2026. (Reuters)
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Parisians Will Get a New Chance of Seine Swimming

People gather on the banks of the Seine River as the sun sets amid a severe heat wave in Paris, France, May 26, 2026. (Reuters)
People gather on the banks of the Seine River as the sun sets amid a severe heat wave in Paris, France, May 26, 2026. (Reuters)

Swimmers will for the second year be able to cool off at designated points along the Seine River in Paris this summer, authorities said Friday, as well as along the Marne River in the suburbs.

In Paris, the swimming season was to open at three official bathing sites on July 4, the mayor's office said.

The Seine reopened to swimmers last summer for the first time in a century, after Paris poured more than a billion euros ($1.15 billion) into a years-long effort to making the waters clean enough to use in the 2024 Olympics.

Sites this year will again include the Bras de Grenelle near the Eiffel Tower, the Bras Marie -- a short walk from Notre-Dame -- and Bercy, on the eastern side.

Some 100,000 people last year queued to jump in, the city said, despite a slow start to the season with rain disrupting the water quality.

Some 50,000 swimmers jumped into the Marne River in the eastern suburbs last year.

The bathing spots in Joinville-le-Pont, Champigny-sur-Marne, Saint-Maur-des-Fosses and Maison-Alfort would again welcome swimmers. A fifth spot would be added this year at Neuilly-sur-Marne northeast of Paris.

French authorities warned against swimming in parts of the rivers without lifeguards.

Varieties

Independent Researcher Exposes Basic Blunder in Scores of Cancer Studies

Researchers at the laboratory. (Cancer Research UK, Cambridge Institute)
Researchers at the laboratory. (Cancer Research UK, Cambridge Institute)
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Independent Researcher Exposes Basic Blunder in Scores of Cancer Studies

Researchers at the laboratory. (Cancer Research UK, Cambridge Institute)
Researchers at the laboratory. (Cancer Research UK, Cambridge Institute)

An independent researcher has uncovered potential blunder in scores of scientific studies, including cancer-related research, as a result of inappropriate antibody use in laboratory experiments, raising questions about the reliability of some of the results published in prestigious scientific journals.

The researcher found that scientists at Cambridge, Oxford, Stanford and other universities appear to have accidentally used the wrong ingredient in their experiments, muddling two proteins with similar names but entirely different sequences and functions.

Several British media outlets said researcher Sholto David reviewed the full text of 334 research papers to determine whether the antibody used in the studies was correctly intended for p16-ARC or incorrectly used to try and bind p16-INK4a.

P16-INK4a acts as a tumor suppressor by halting the cell cycle and is widely studied in cancer biology and is considered a key biomarker of ageing.

He found astonishing result: 95% of these papers have got it wrong.

“The vast majority of researchers who purchased antibodies have tried to use them to investigate p16-INK4a expression. Only 17 used these p16-ARC antibodies correctly,” he said in his research.

David said the implications are not good, to put it mildly.

“And these are not just insignificant papers. There are papers with hundreds of citations in high impact journals claiming to probe for p16-INK4a with antibodies which do not bind p16-INK4a,” he noted.