Minimalism

In the visual arts and music, minimalism is a style that uses pared-down design elements.

Minimalism in the arts began in post–World War II Western Art, most strongly with American visual arts in the 1960s and early 1970s. Prominent artists associated with minimalism include Donald Judd, John McCracken, Agnes Martin, Dan Flavin, Robert Morris, Anne Truitt, and Frank Stella. It derives from the reductive aspects of Modernism and is often interpreted as a reaction against Abstract expressionism and a bridge to Postminimal art practices.

Minimalism in music features repetition and iteration such as those of the compositions of La Monte Young, Terry Riley, Steve Reich, Philip Glass, and John Adams. Minimalist compositions are sometimes known as systems music. The term "minimalist" often colloquially refers to anything that is spare or stripped to its essentials. It has also been used to describe the plays and novels of Samuel Beckett, the films of Robert Bresson, the stories of Raymond Carver, and the automobile designs of Colin Chapman. The word was first used in English in the early 20th century to describe "a 1913 composition by the Russian painter Kasimir Malevich of a black square on a white ground".

Minimalism (disambiguation)

The term minimalism may refer to:

See also

Biblical Minimalism

Biblical minimalism, also known as the Copenhagen School because two of its most prominent figures taught at Copenhagen University, was a movement or trend in biblical scholarship that began in the 1990s with two main claims:

Minimalism was not a unified movement, but rather a label that came to be applied to several scholars at different universities who held similar views, chiefly Niels Peter Lemche and Thomas L. Thompson at the University of Copenhagen, Philip R. Davies, and Keith Whitelam. Minimalism gave rise to intense debate during the 1990s - the term "minimalists" was in fact a derogatory one given by its opponents, who were consequently dubbed "maximalists", but in fact neither side accepted either label. The so-called Maximalists, or neo-Albrightians, were composed of two quite distinct groups, the first represented by the archaeologist William Dever and the influential publication Biblical Archaeology Review, the second by conservative evangelical Christians such as biblical scholar Iain Provan and Egyptologist Kenneth Kitchen. Although these debates were in some cases heated, most scholars stayed in the middle ground between minimalists and maximalists evaluating the arguments of both schools critically, and since the 1990s, while some of the minimalist arguments have been challenged or rejected, others have been refined and adopted into the mainstream of biblical scholarship.

Binary

Binary means composed of two pieces or two parts and may refer to:

Mathematics

Computing

Science

Binary (novel)

Binary is a techno-thriller novel written by Michael Crichton in 1972 under the pen-name John Lange. Michael Crichton also directed Pursuit, a TV-Movie version. The story of both the book and the film revolve around a deadly nerve agent composed by combining two different chemicals. Hard Case Crime republished the novel under Crichton's name in 2013.

Plot summary

The villain is a middle-class small businessman named John Wright who decides to assassinate the President of the United States. He spends his life savings to carry out the theft of a U.S. Army shipment of the two precursor chemicals that form a deadly nerve gas codenamed VZ when combined.

The ingredients for the nerve gas VZ were intended to be detonated in downtown San Diego, corresponding with the arrival of the President to attend a Republican party conference taking place there. This nerve gas had no safe antidote, and it kills in two to three minutes after being inhaled or touched.

This nerve gas is contained inside two "Alacran" (a combustible plastic) tanks, and plastic explosives are wrapped around the containers, so that when after the nerve gas is released, the containers explode, rendering the scene of the crime untraceable.

Binary chemical weapon

Binary chemical weapons or munitions are chemical weapons wherein the toxic agent in its active state is not contained within the weapon. Rather, the toxin is in the form of two chemical precursors, physically separated within the weapon. The precursors are designed to be significantly less toxic than the agent they make when mixed, and this allows the weapon to be transported and stored more safely than otherwise. The safety provided by binary chemical weapons is especially important for people who live near ammunition dumps.

The chemical reaction takes place when the weapon is deployed. Firing the munition or other deployment action removes the barrier between the two precursors, so they can react with one another. Commonly, there is a final stage which utilizes a bursting charge to aerosolize and distribute the chemical agent.

Binary chemical weapons are chemical weapons within the scope of the chemical weapons convention and therefore their production, use and stockpiling is forbidden in most countries. As at least one of the individual chemicals is likely to be a Schedule 1 chemical for which large scale production is forbidden.