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. Reknowned for his role in breaking the infamous Enigma code during World War II, Turing was later persecuted for his homosexuality and committed suicide.
Turing Machine utilizes a re-visioned typewriter as a model Turing Machine. The viewer presses buttons that scan the clips 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 holding each other, the crime for which Turing was persecuted.
For more information on Alan Turing please visit the Alan Turing Scrapbook and the Turing Archive for the History of Computing.
Thank you Scott Corrigan & Gilberto Oliveros, Dan O’Sullivan, Tom Igoe, Shlomit Lehavi.