algorithmic drawings

by Roman VEROSTKO

A family of algorithmic pen plotted drawings, each presented with the binary text for a Universal Turing Machine (UTM), were created for an exhibition in Manchester on the occasion of the Ninth International Symposium on Electronic Art (1998). .

The artistic procedure employs a form-generation method which, by analogy to biological process, may be viewed as epigenetic. The software (code), created by the artist, behaves as genotype capable of generating a distinctive “family of forms” within any given set of parameters. The hyperspace of all possible forms, based on the specific parameter settings for this Manchester edition, is infinitely vast.

Manchester Illuminated Universal Turing Machine, #9 1998pen plotted drawing with gold leaf30" by 22" UTM - Is The gating logic for circuit boards in all general computers descends from a logical procedure known as a Universal Turing Machine (UTM). The logic for this algorithm by Alan Turing (1912-54) was written in 1936 and published in 1937 in the Proceedings of the London Mathematical Society. This paper, “On computable numbers, with an application to the Entscheidungsproblem", planted the seminal idea for all general computers.

Detail of the UTM binary text with gold leaf. Click here for full text page (719 kb).

Detail shows algorithmically generated pen plotted lines from illumination #23 above

detail from one on the work of Illuminated Universal Turing Machine