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Turing Machine

An interactive documentary on the life of Alan Turing. Created in collaboration with Gian Pablo Villamil.

Turing Machine is an interactive documentary on the life of Alan Turing, the father of modern computing, in the guise of a Turing Machine. Reknowned for his role in breaking the infamous Enigma code and the role in the war Turing was later persecuted for his homosexuality committed suicide.

Turing Machine utilizes a re-visioned typewriter into the basic model of a Turing Machine. The viewer presses buttons that scan the images forward & back to depict the life of Alan Turing. At the moment when he is imprisoned for his homosexuality the images distort & pile on top of each other. Each time the viewer seeks to press a button the top most image flies away until in the end all that is left is the arsenic covered apple with which Turing committed suicide. The final image is of two men tenderly the crime for which this hero of the war was persecuted.

For more information on Alan Turing please visit the Alan Turing Scrapbook and the Turing Archive for the History of Computing.

ITP Winter show 2006