Intuition and Ingenuity

Intuition and Ingenuity is a group touring exhibition that explores the enduring influence of Alan Turing – the father of modern computing - on art and contemporary culture. Other artists in this exhibition include Roman Verostko, Patrick Tresset, Paul Brown, Ernest Edmonds, Gordana Novakovic, Greg Garvey, Anna Dumitriu and Alex May. First venue on the tour is Kinetica, London (9-12 Feb) then Lighthouse Brighton (17-26 Feb); Lovebytes Festival in Sheffield (22-24 March) and V&A Digital Design Weekend (22-23 Sept 2012). In our new artwork 'Fragments of Lost Flight' scaled wing fragments are generated by computational mechanisms, inspired by Alan Turing's descriptions of a virtual machine now known as a Turing Machine. Over time a narrow facet of diversity is explored as the 'machine' is fed random programs. Each wing fragment generated by the 'machine' exists only for the time it is on screen and is unlikely ever to be recreated. In nature the process that leads to familiar forms such as butterfly wings are exposed to intense selective pressure with only those of value for survival remaining, in contrast, 'Fragments of Lost Flight' treats all possibilities equally.