Cindyana Santangelo, a philanthropist, model and actor who made memorable appearances in music videos for Young MC and Jane’s Addiction and had roles in “ER” and “CSI: Miami,” died Monday at a hospital near her Malibu home, the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department confirmed to The Times.
The Los Angeles County Fire Department was called to a home on Westlake Boulevard in Malibu for a medical emergency around 7:15 p.m. Monday, the sheriff’s department said in an alert. She was taken by paramedics to a hospital where she was pronounced dead. The cause of death is unknown; an autopsy is pending. Sheriff’s homicide investigators are assisting deputies from the Los Hills Sheriff’s Station with the continuing investigation, as is routine when the cause of death is unknown.
Born Cindy Lehrer in 1967 in Manhattan, per IMDb, she was raised in Los Angeles. She started out as a dancer, appearing in various music videos in the late 1980s and early 1990s, including Young MC’s “Bust a Move” video. She also delivered the Spanish-language introduction to the “Juana’s Adicción” tune “Stop” in a Jane’s Addiction video, leading frontman Perry Farrell to later describe her to Spin magazine as “the Latin Marilyn Monroe.”
As Cindyana Lair, she appeared on “Married … With Children” as Jiggly Room dancer Sierra Madre.
She married Frank Santangelo in 2001 and was the mother of two boys. Her LinkedIn page lists her as the director and chief executive of Mermaids Cove Malibu, described as an all-women’s luxury sober living facility. In what appear to be documentary or reality-show promos based on Mermaids Cove, Santangelo described herself while discussing why she chose to help others.
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“I’m Cindyana. I’m a great mommy, a wife, a daughter, a friend, a CEO — and a recovering addict,” she says in one video, adding later, “I had kind of the party rock star life, but I ended up as sort of, everybody knows, a low-bottom junkie.
“When I had the blessing to get clean and sober this time,” she says, “I realized that there was a niche in this market of recovery for people like me. That someone like me could touch only a certain ilk of women, that they would believe it and hear it only from me.”
Santangelo spoke with The Times in 2008 when she was offering up what was then her home in Malibu Cove Colony as an August rental, asking $55,000 per month. Regis Philbin and his wife, Joy, were interested, she said at the time.
Cindyana Santangelo sits in the ocean-view primary bedroom of her Malibu Cove Colony home in 2008.
(Los Angeles Times)
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Santangelo’s friends remembered her online Tuesday and Wednesday.
“My heart aches as I write this. I’m still in shock and disbelief. How can you be gone??? … Malibu was your paradise, where your soul danced with the tides and your laughter blended with the sound of the waves,” Cynthia Banuelos wrote on Instagram in a post mourning Santangelo’s passing. “You had a heart as vast as the ocean, a spirit as free as the wind, and a love that ran deeper than the blue depths you adored. Frank and the Boys (Dante & Lucci), were your reason for living.”
“Swim free, my beautiful mermaid. Until we meet again,” she added.
“Head of the Class” actor Kimberly Russell chimed in on Banuelos’ post, writing in comments, “my beautiful Cindyana …. an angel in life …. this is shocking rest in peace …”
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“No no no! This is impossible,” German actor Xenia Seeberg wrote in comments. “We just spoke a few days ago and planned together for Thailand and Istanbul and how we would see each other again much more often…! I am in complete shock. What happened to my beautiful sister??? Much too early to rest in peace.”
“I am devastated of this horrific news,” Samantha Bennington, wife of the late Linkin Park frontman Chester Bennington, said in comments. “We were just about to celebrate her for her birthday!!!! This is a huge loss, not only for us as her family and friends, but for the entire community!!!! You will forever be in our hearts and we’re here for you all Frank and the kids. We are here for you.”
Bennington also put up her own Instagram post where she thanked Santangelo, saying, “you wrapped your arms around me and accepted me and loved on me as a friend the very first moment you met me I’ll never forget you for welcoming me into your tribe … heartbroken.”
At the centre of Madhuvidhu directed by Vishnu Aravind is a house where only men reside, three generations of them living in harmony. Unlike the Anjooran household in Godfather, this is not a house where entry is banned to women, but just that women don’t choose to come here. For Amrithraj alias Ammu (Sharafudheen), the protagonist, 28 marriage proposals have already fallen through although he was not lacking in interest.
When a not-so-cordial first meeting with Sneha (Kalyani Panicker) inevitably turns into mutual attraction, things appear about to change. But some unexpected hiccups are waiting for them, their different religions being one of them. Writers Jai Vishnu and Bipin Mohan do not seem to have any major ambitions with Madhuvidhu, but they seem rather content to aim for the middle space of a feel-good entertainer. Only that they end up hitting further lower.
After more than two and a half years of research, planning and construction, Dataland, the world’s first museum of AI arts, will open June 20.
Co-founded by new media artists Refik Anadol and Efsun Erkılıç, the museum anchors the $1-billion Frank Gehry-designed Grand LA complex across the street from Walt Disney Concert Hall in downtown Los Angeles. Its first exhibition, “Machine Dreams: Rainforest,” created by Refik Anadol Studio, was inspired by a trip to the Amazon and uses vast data sets to immerse visitors in a machine-generated sensory experience of the natural world.
The architecture of the space, which Anadol calls “a living museum,” is used to reflect distant rainforest ecosystems, including changing temperature, light, smell and visuals. Anadol refers to these large-scale, shimmering tableaus as “digital sculptures.”
“This is such an important technology, and represents such an important transformation of humanity,” Anadol said in an interview. “And we found it so meaningful and purposeful to be sure that there is a place to talk about it, to create with it.”
The 35,000-square-foot privately funded museum devotes 25,000 square feet to public space, with the remaining 10,000 square feet holding the in-house technology that makes the space run. Dataland contains five immersive galleries and a 30-foot ceiling. An escalator by the entrance will transport guests to the experiences below. The museum declined to say how much Dataland, designed by architecture firm Gensler, cost to build.
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An isometric architectural rendering of Dataland. The 25,000-square-foot AI arts museum also contains an additional 10,000 square feet of non-public space that holds its operational technology.
(Refik Anadol Studio for Dataland)
Dataland will collect and preserve artificial intelligence art and is powered by an open-access AI model created by Anadol’s studio called the Large Nature Model. The model, which does not source without permission, culls mountains of data about the natural world from partners including the Smithsonian, London’s Natural History Museum and the Cornell Lab of Ornithology. This data, including up to half a billion images of nature, will form the basis for the creation of a variety of AI artworks, including “Machine Dreams.”
“AI art is a part of digital art, meaning a lineage that uses software, data and computers to create a form of art,” Anadol explained. “I know that many artists don’t want to disclose their technologies, but for me, AI means possibilities. And possibilities come with responsibilities. We have to disclose exactly where our data comes from.”
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Sustainability is another responsibility that Anadol takes seriously. For more than a decade, Anadol has devoted much thought to the massive carbon footprint associated with AI models. The Large Nature Model is hosted on Google Cloud servers in Oregon that use 87% carbon-free, renewable energy. Anadol says the energy used to support an individual visit to the museum is equivalent to what it takes to charge a single smartphone.
Anadol believes AI can form a powerful bridge to nature — serving as a means to access and preserve it — and that the swiftly evolving technology can be harnessed to illuminate essential truths about humanity’s relationship to an interconnected planet. During a time of great anxiety about the power of AI to disrupt lives and livelihoods, Anadol maintains it can be a revolutionary tool in service of a never-before-seen form of art.
“The works generate an emergent, living reality, a machine’s dream shaped by continuous streams of environmental and biological data. Within this evolving system, moments of recognition and interpretation emerge across different forms of knowledge,” a news release about the museum explains. “At the same time, the exhibition registers loss as part of this expanded field of perception, most notably in the Infinity Room, where visitors encounter the 1987 recording of the last known Kauaʻi ʻŌʻō, a now-extinct bird whose unanswered call becomes part of the work.”
“It’s very exciting to say that AI art is not image only,” Anadol said. “It’s a very multisensory, multimedium experience — meaning sound, image, video, text, smell, taste and touch. They are all together in conversation.”
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