Output details
34 - Art and Design: History, Practice and Theory
Bournemouth University
Fragments of Lost Flight
Originality.
Isley and Smith (aka boredomresearch) extended their investigation of mechanisms inspired by Alan Turing's description of a virtual machine for Intuition and Ingenuity, an exhibition celebrating the work of Alan Turing. 'Turing' machine procedures are combined with autonomous agents, generating complex scaled forms, redolent of Lepidoptera.
Significance.
Commissioned by the Alan Turing Centenary Arts and Culture Subcommittee, then The Arts Council of England and Computer Art Society funded a tour of the work alongside pioneers including Roman Verostko and William Latham. Venues include: V&A Digital Design Weekend, London (instances of participation 19,000) - during this event boredomresearch presented their underpinning research in a public lecture; Kinetica Art Fair, London; The Society for the Study of Artificial Intelligence and Simulation of Behaviour and The International Association for Computing and Philosophy World Congress 2012, Birmingham; Lovebytes International Festival of Digital Art, Sheffield; Bletchley Park, Bletchley. The body of work formed a solo exhibition at the DAM Gallery, Berlin.
Rigour.
Isley led an investigation that fused mechanical and biological models of behaviour to produce special patterns, composited in real time, with a visual quality evocative of botanical illustrations. Combining the act of illustration with a process of simulation questioned traditional forms of practice against a contemporary computational backdrop. In response to Turing’s own writing on the subject of mathematical reasoning the research considers “Turing’s enduring influence on art and contemporary culture” Sue Gollifer, Digital Creativity (2012). Central to the investigation is the potential for simple mechanisms to create and explore diversity. The implemented pattern forming process responded to H. Frederik Nijhout's 'The Development and Evolution of Butterfly Wing Patterns' with significant adjustments to accommodate a novel agent based approach. This was further informed while in residence at Chilcomb House Collection, Winchester and in consultation with researchers in the Hampshire Butterfly Conservation Branch.
