EXHIBITION

The Imitation Game

Manchester Art Gallery, Manchester, Manchester, 02/13/2016 - 06/05/2016

Mosley Street, Manchester M2 3JL

ABOUT

The Imitation Game is an exhibition by eight international contemporary artists who explore the theme of machines and the imitation of life. The exhibition will include work by: APT artist Yu-Chen Wang, Ed Atkins, James Capper, Paul Granjon, Tove Kjellmark, Lynn Hershman Leeson, David Link, Mari Velonaki and. With a title inspired by Alan Turing’s Turing Test, devised to test a computer’s ability to imitate human thought, introduced in an article while he was working at The University of Manchester, The Imitation Game includes three new commissions and works never before seen in the UK.

The exhibition looks back to Turing’s timeless questions about our relationship with the machine, and explores their continuing relevance today. The Imitation Game will form a major contribution to Manchester’s role asEuropean City of Science 2016 with new commissions, a publication and a public programme of talks, performances and workshops. 

Yu-Chen Wang
What if machines sitting in museum stores could remember, talk and interact with each other? What would they say, think and remember? Do machines have human qualities? Do humans have machine qualities?

In Spring 2015 Yu-Chen Wang was artist-in-residence at the Museum of Science and Industry. Her research and reflection on the Museum’s collection and historic site has led to a major new work, Heart to Heart for The Imitation Game, which encompasses text, performance, film, drawing and installation. Her work can be seen at both Manchester Art Gallery and the museum.

Following the residency, Wang collaborated with science fiction novelist Matt Hill and museum curator Sarah Baines to write the story of four characters inspired by a chosen group of objects at the Museum, who reminisce about their past and imagine their futures, revealing the interconnections between machine and human histories.

The fictional text has become a script for a live performance, featuring the four machine characters. A film of the performance is showing in the Liverpool Road Station building at the Museum of Science and Industry and an immersive installation using video projection, sound and drawing to evoke the machine dialogues is on display at Manchester Art Gallery.

 

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