Turing Arts: Growing Connections and Digital Mimicry

In 2009 the UK government decided to honour Alan Turing as a national figure. Turing was a code-breaker during World War 2 and a mathematician. His ideas and abstractions also gave birth to digital computers and Computer Science. In 2012 Computer Scientists, Artificial Intelligence Researchers and Philosophers in the UK have been celebrating the work and ideas of Alan Turing. The Turing Arts symposium was one of the research events held in the UK this year. The initial idea for the symposium was conceived by Cate Dowd and grew from conversations with colleagues across arts and computing. Part of the inspiration was Turing's creative ideas in the late 1940s for machines of the future and ideas for 'machine intelligence'. Turing also envisaged competition between man and machine and similar ideas are played out in Science Fiction Films. Turing's 'Turing Test' also has similarities with fictional machines like the Voight Kampff machine in the film Blade Runner (based on Phil Dick's novel Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?). Turing's controversial ideas about 'machine consciousness' led to reflections on early forms of Automata and the idea of 'play' on machine consciousness found in Surrealism. The research opened up further links across Turing's ideas for digital mimicry and digital music and Generative Art. It also captured new ideas associated with mimicry of the human brain, embodiment, and random elements of machines and machine intelligence. The research culminated in the Turing Arts symposium held in Birmingham, UK, in July this year as part of the AISB/IACAP World Congress. Cate will present on her own research as well as giving an overview of the Turing Arts Symposium.