Message from the Unseen World
Paddington Central, London, 2016
Anodised Aluminium, LED, Code. 19.2 x 1.6m
Message from the Unseen World was commissioned by Future City for British Land’s Paddington Central along the gateway to the new development close to Bishop’s Bridge Road and the Regent’s canal.
A large-scale, permanent work inspired by the ideas and legacy of Alan Turing who was born in the Paddington area, Turing is often considered to be one of the founding fathers of modern computer science, an exceptional mathematician and code breaker who not only outlined the concept of the general purpose computer, but also defined and instituted the field of Artificial Intelligence. Turing’s work has greatly inspired United Visual Artists in their algorithmic design principles, so on discovering his connection to the area a public homage to him felt even more fitting.
The front face of the artwork comprises LED and perforated aluminium panels that display a hard-coded version of extracts from Turing’s groundbreaking ‘Computing Machinery and Intelligence’ (first published in 1950), visually represented as patterns based on Baudot code. Within the artwork’s software lives another text, a specially commissioned new poem by the writer Nick Drake, inspired by Turing. Using basic principles of AI the work’s software or ‘engine’ endlessly interprets Drake’s poem. Together, these elements create dynamic, constantly changing sequences of letters, words and phrases that gives viewers a sense of observing a machine trying write like a poet, whilst thinking like a machine.
As well as a lyrical in memoriam for Turing, Message from the Unseen World also reminds us of the complementary relationship between people and technology, how it has changed from the 20th to early 21st Century, and how this relationship will continue to develop.
