How do simple programs behave

Whereas once the world view of the ancient world was shifted by Pythagorean mathematics, scientific knowledge and human perception has been contested in the 21st century by developments in computation. In his ground-breaking book Stephen Wolfram, the British physicist and creator of the Mathematica program, asserted that the complexity of the universe could be clearly understood in terms of simple programs. Here in an exclusive extract, Wolfram describes how one of the most straightforward programs, cellular automata, despite adhering to simple rules, yields some surprisingly complex results. Copyright © 2006 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

A KEY-SEARCH ATTACK ON MACLAREN-MARSAGLIA SYSTEMS

The MacLaren-Marsaglia algorithm combines two pseudo-random sequence generators to form a “more random” generator. A method of attacking stream ciphers which use this algorithm is described. It operates by searching for the key to one of the generators without using the other.     

The Ghost of Humanism: Rethinking the Subjective Turn in Postwar American Photography

This article examines the use of shadow, blur, graininess, and reflection in the work of the postwar photographers Robert Frank, William Klein, and Ralph Eugene Meatyard as a response to the rhetoric of Cold War containment. In contrast to the more comforting images in Edward Steichen’s popular exhibit The Family of Man, which sought to downplay Cold War anxieties, the photographs of Frank, Klein, and Meatyard challenged viewer expectation by presenting human figures in varying states of disintegration and disappearance. The term ‘subjective’ has long been used to describe a return to personal and private concerns during the postwar years, but discussion has focused mainly on the subjectivity of the artist rather than the viewer. By challenging the sanctity of the human figure, Frank, Klein, and Meatyard force viewers to confront such difficult images and, in the process, re-examine the fears and anxieties that lay dormant during the tense years of the early Cold War.     

‘Swiping … and Daguerreotyping’: Photographing Golf at St Andrews

Abstract

When photography was invented, St Andrews was already a very old town, littered with the remains of a glorious and turbulent his tory: notably the skeletons of a once magnificent cathedral and a large Augustinian priory and a ruined castle, horne of the former bishops and archbishops. Zealous reformers had helped reduce these great symbols of medieval Scotland's archiepiscopal see, which were now picturesque ruins, ideal for recording in the new medium of photography. However, St Andrews in the nineteenth century was more than just ‘that Reformation bombsite’.1 This rather apt phrase was used recently by Les Murray in his poem, St Andrews University AD 2000, one of ten poems specially commissioned to mark the 250th anniversary of the birth of Robert Fergusson, poet, former St Andrews student and inspiration to Robert Burns. It had a small, sleepy university, with old college buildings nestling among the town's commercial and private properties. But also it had something else alive and stirring in the western end of the town — its famous 'Old' golf course. Around the time the first St Andrews photographs were being made, George Fullerton Carnegie penned the following lines in his Golfiana: Address to St Andrews:     

‘The Diversity of Expression and the Wondrous Power of the Art of Photography’ in the Albums of Richard Cockle Lucas

From 1859 to 1878 the British sculptor Richard Cockle Lucas assembled at least sixteen albums containing photographs of himself in numerous guises, ranging from Shakespearean roles to embodiments of specific emotions. Lucas utilised the practice of dressing up in front of the camera in conjunction with the album format as an ongoing means of experimenting with photography’s capacity to convey human expression, and as an extension of his concerns as a sculptor. Lucas’s albums, which also include photographs of his work in sculpture, represent the first sustained pursuit of photographic self-depiction in such a wide range of roles. Read in conjunction with Lucas’s own writings on expression in photography and sculpture, the albums reveal how Lucas viewed photographic self-portraiture as a form of ‘living sculpture’ to be enacted before the camera.     

The centennial of the first X-ray crystal structures

A short account is given of the discoveries of the first crystal structures using X-ray diffraction by William Henry Bragg and William Lawrence Bragg, a father and son team working at Leeds University and Cambridge University. Their first publications, separately and together, are highlighted. This is a contribution to the centennial celebrations of these discoveries and looking towards the International Year of Crystallography to be celebrated in 2014 led by the International Union of Crystallography.     

Dream a Little Dream

Does the protocell require too great a leap in scalar imagination for architects? A detail of a building is manageable but what about something smaller than the microscopic? Mark Morris encourages designers to scale down to the diminutive level of the nanoscale by providing them with some inspiring precedents in architectural theory and popular culture. Copyright © 2011 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

William Bevan (1922-2007).

Presents an obituary for William Bevan, one of the 20th century's most honored psychologists. Bevan died at the age of 84 on February 19, 2007, at the Duke University Hospital in Durham, North Carolina. His death concluded a courageous, 18-year struggle with the aftereffects of a serious stroke. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Juxtaposing the New and the Old

The reputation of the renowned London-based architect Eric Parry rests on his contemporary, but highly contextual approach to the designing of buildings in historic and highly visible city-centre sites. The author of Context: Architecture and the Genius of Place (Wiley, 2015), Parry acknowledges here the debt that he owes to the thinking of Dalibor Vesely, while describing how it plays out in his renewal project for St Martin-in-the-Fields in London and the extension of the Holburne Museum in Bath.     

Brasília: Life Beyond Utopia

Brasília is renowned the world over for its realisation of a visionary Modernist plan, designed by Brazilian architect and planner Lúcio Costa (1902–98). The reality of the city's design and its development, as explained by architect, author and academic researcher Thomas Deckker , is, however, much more complex. Contrary to public perception, Brasília falls a long way short of being ‘a unified city’, though it is one that has prospered with a growing population and stronger economy than other Brazilian cities.