About the cover: "Reconfigurable machines"

The basic notion behind the cover of this issue was Paulien Hogeweg\´s growing polyautomata, used as a metaphor for reconfigurable machines. Hogeweg\´s work (1974), reflecting one of the current important efforts to marry computer sciences with biology, uses automata theory to explain the growth behavior of living things. The "genes" (4-ary strings) for the filamentary organisms like those shown on the cover are produced by a very simple set of eight rules. The phenotypic expression of the genesi. e., the actual physical expression of the simulated genetic code-can be amazingly lifelike, as evidenced by the pictures below and on the facing page, which represent steps in the creation of the final image on the cover.