南安倉

Leo Rubinfien is one of photography's great travelers, and his pictures are rich with the beauty of life on the road. These images are less about exotic, faraway places and more about the shared landscapes of in-between places: the railway compartment, the aircraft cabin, the airport terminal, tourists at a celebrated monument, or the luminous mixture of sun, water and air that a passenger glimpses through an airplane window. Included in the exhibition are a selection of the artist's most recent photographs, some of which are published in Blind Spot #19 (November, 2001). In these images of billboards and signs we sense his fascination with their combination of ugliness and beauty and the dreams of youth, wealth and love that they convey.

In The New York Times, Charles Hagen explains that the strength of Rubinfien's photographs "lies in their ability to evoke the sense of discovery and surprise, alienation and introspection, that for many people characterizes the experience of travel. For many people this uneasy blend of emotions includes homesickness and melancholy, a yearning to be no longer the outsider. This feeling comes through strongly in Mr. Rubinfien's lonely, elegant pictures." Maria Morris Hambourg, Curator of Photographs at the Metropolitan Museum of Art describes Rubinfien's first book, A Map of the East "as vivid and aching as brands on the heart."

Leo Rubinfien was born in Chicago in 1953. He has photographed in more than 40 countries across the world. Among other prestigious awards, he has received the Guggenheim Fellowship. His photographs have been exhibited widely at major museums in the United States, Europe and Japan, and are represented in many public and private collections, including the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Museum of Modern Art, the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, the Corcoran Gallery and the Cleveland and Seattle Art Museums.

Bio:

Leo Rubinfien
American, 1953-

Leo Rubinfien is an art critic, photographer, filmmaker, and educator. A student of philosophy and literature at Reed College in Oregon, Rubinfien went on to study photography at the California Institute of the Arts (B.F.A, 1974) and Yale University (1976). He then worked for two years as a critic, contributing more than 125 articles, essays, and reviews to major periodicals, including Artforum, Art in America, and the Village Voice.

From 1980-88 Rubinfien made an extensive series of color photographs that concentrated on Asian subjects from Burma, Japan, India, Thailand, and Indonesia. The series was shown at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York (1992), the Seibu Art Forum, Tokyo (1993), the Cleveland Museum of Art (1994), and the Seattle Art Museum (1995) and was published in 1992 as A Map of the East.

Rubinfien (born in Chicago) has won several awards, including fellowships from the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation (1983, 1992) and the Asian Cultural Council (1984). He also has had some success as a filmmaker. The Money Juggler (1988) was screened at the Museum of Modern Art, New York, as part of its New Directors, New Films festival (1989) and was included in the American Film Institute/Los Angeles International Film Festival (1989). Rubinfien lives in Croton-on-Hudson, New York. A.W.

可惜找不到更多他的照片了. 

landscape stories

the painter's tool

Jem Southam is one of the most significant figures in British photography of the last twenty years. Emerging as an artist during the 1980s, Southam's images fused the formal composition of traditional landscape representation with the social conscience of modern documentary projects. His meditative photographs are about the ways in which man and nature constantly restructure the earth. Southam often returns to the same locations over several months or years, recording the gradual transformation of the landscape. Although the scenes are tranquil, the locations are in a state of flux; "as geological events and time scales collide, as cliffs dramatically recede, as sea and rivers swirl in confluence and ponds appear as surface wounds opening into the depths of the earth, the land is revealed as contingent and unreliable." (The Shape of Time, PhotoWorks 2000)

some more

以前生物系统的数学模型总是预测出不稳定的结果：不是捕食者将它们的猎物吃光，就是当猎物减少时捕食者由于没有足够的食物来源而灭绝。但是在真实的大自然里，物种的稳定性要好得多，这部分是由于生物分布在相互区隔、同时又能够通过生物迁徙相互补充的多个区域内。但是很难按照这一构想构造出稳定的数学模型，研究者们也没有确切理解到底是什么因素阻止生物灭绝的发生。在今年三月二日出版的《物理学评论快报》上，一个研究小组描述了一个稳定的数学模型，这个模型中包含了生物迁徙这个因素，因而可以通过这一模型考察阻止生物灭绝的确切因素。这项研究有望对规划动物保护政策以及设计药物提供有力的理论依据。

不难想象，当猎物的数量增加的时候，相应捕食者物种也会随之繁衍；最终捕食者的数量变得过多而导致猎物的数量减少。由于缺乏食物，捕食者的数量也会随后减少。由于这一机制的存在，生物的数量会以振荡的规律发展。在上世纪二三十年代的时候，数学家们利用微分方程来描述这种振荡现象。但是这些先驱者很快就发现，这种数学模型的解是不稳定的。在原来理想模型的基础上加入一些代表外部因素——比如疾病、和其它物种之间的竞争或者气候的改变——的随机扰动，会使物种数量变化超过极限，直到有物种最后灭绝。

最近，研究者们尝试利用计算机模拟来考察这个问题：在模拟中每个生物个体的行为规律是确定的，运行一段时间之后考察生物数量随时间的变化。这些模拟实验显示，如果生物分布在多个不同区域，相互之间可以迁徙的话，就可以得到稳定的生物系统。在这样的条件下，某个区域的生物数量会发生振荡，有时甚至会出现生物灭绝的现象，但是所有区域内猎物和捕食者的总数量是稳定的。在实验室中的类似实验——比如将细菌作为猎物、病毒作为捕食者构成的生物系统——中同样发现这种多区域分布导致的稳定性。但是这类实验仍然无法弄清楚阻止生物灭绝的确切因素。

以色列Bar-Ilan大学的Nadav Shnerb领导的研究小组得到了这个问题的严格数学解。从猎物-捕食者系统的经典微分方程出发，他们对成对的区域建立了数学模型，每个区域中都有猎物和捕食者，并且不同区域之间的生物可以相互迁徙。

建立这个模型是为了鉴别出导致生物系统稳定的确切因素。Shnerb和他的同事们发现关键的性质在于振荡的频率依赖于它们的振幅。这在现实生活中有很直接的反映：当生物的数量比较少的时候，生物数量的变化是比较缓慢的；而当生物数量比较大的时候，它们的变化也比较迅速，这是在实验观察中早就被证实过了的现象。考虑到这个关键的因素之后，在模型中加入一些随机的数量涨落——真实世界中存在的各种扰动因素——这使得区域中生物数量不再保持同步，两种生物都不会灭绝。这项研究证实了以前生态学家的猜测——不同区域间的非同步地加上区域之间的迁徙会在整体范围内产生稳定性。这项最新研究成果在坚实的数学基础上验证了这种观点。

Shnerb透露，这项结果将会对构造不同区域内濒危物种的数学模型有帮助。在制药业中同样有巨大的应用前景，帮助在新的抗菌治疗（Anti-Bacterial Therapy）中使用灭菌病毒（Bacteria-Killing Viruse）。在这种情况下，科学家们可以计算得到使系统不稳定的条件，从而保证杀死所有的细菌。

在很多情况下，自然中的生物数量比（先前）模型得到的结果更稳定。英国Royal Holloway University的数学生物学家Vincent Jansen认为：“这篇文章告诉我们，如果以一种恰当的方式来看这个问题，空间的相互作用会使系统稳定下来。我认为在解释自然界中生物数量的变化规律上我们经历了漫长的探索。”

Amplitude-Dependent Frequency, Desynchronization, and Stabilization in Noisy Metapopulation Dynamics
Refael Abta, Marcelo Schiffer, and Nadav M. Shnerb
Phys. Rev. Lett. 98, 098104

终于，从10号接到offer的通知书的狂欢中清醒过来了。而自同济建筑系跑走，总算都有了个最好的交代。

去年九月回美国，接着十月带着自己作品参加了National Porfolio Day之后， 被School of Art Institute of Chicago(芝加哥艺术学院）录取，虽然它给的条件很好，看我的情况后，推荐我多个系一起修，其艺术系在美来说的确是数一数二，但建筑只能说中等略好。心里还是有些遗憾。

于是做了全面的建筑学院搜索与比较后，申请了另一所学校（Cooper Union for the Advancment of Science and Art)。很多业外人可能并不知道它，但如果看美国连续剧《越狱》的话，也许会对它有点印象，因为作为主角的落狱的建筑师两兄弟，哥哥是毕业于Yale（耶鲁），而去劫狱的弟弟的就是毕业于Cooper Union。这所学校是全美唯一一所全奖学金制的私立院校，位于纽约市中心，成立于1859年。设有建筑，艺术，工程，人文四个学院，尤以建筑与艺术为最强。但是加起来整个学校的学生也只有900多人。开放向全世界招生，建筑学院每年仅录取30人。艺术学院每年60人。工程系最多，每年100人左右。所以，如果能被录取就能拿全额奖学金，但竞争残酷。而且它并不特别看重申请者的成绩或获奖多少或参加课外活动兴趣爱好多少或推荐信如何出自名门，象美国其他的一流院校。它只是发送一册子hometest给建筑和艺术系的申请者，需在一个月内完成，并且寄回学校。然后经过委员会审核讨论评比，统一在4月份寄给申请者录取与否的结果。

不管怎么说，经过今年二月农历新年的绞尽脑汁努力奋斗，总算是万幸中的万幸，被录取了。

学校网址：

Cooper Union

我在找这所学校的中文译名，可能用得比较多的是库柏联盟。

School of Art Institute of Chicago

芝加哥艺术学院