Creative coding

London – United Visual Artists (UVA) has released a short film that explores the creative parameters of artificial intelligence (AI).

• The film, Illuminating: Man and Machine, looks at the creative studio’s memorial to codebreaker Alan Turing
• Narrated by UVA co-founder Matt Clark, the film explores the essence of creativity

Inspired by Turing’s essay, Computing Machinery and Intelligence, in which the mathematician and codebreaker asks ‘can machines think?’, the creative practice considers whether machines will ever be able to create art or whether creativity is an innately human characteristic.

The film focuses on Message from the Unseen World, a light installation created by UVA at the end of 2016 in commemoration of Turing. The piece, located under a bridge in Paddington, features the words of Hackney-based poet and playwright Nick Drake displayed according to an algorithm in a seemingly illogical order. Each version of the poem creates a new interpretation of the verse, which UVA describes as a demonstration of ‘a machine trying to think like an artist, self-generating poetry’.