An Untitled Composition for Tectonic Spaces
Madrid, Berlin, San Francisco, Basel, Amsterdam, Valencia …
Since 2001, infinitely (relativly)
Since 2001, Turing Tables has been shown worldwide at numerous exhibitions in galleries, museums and at art festivals, including the Exploratorium San Francisco (USA), the Media Lab Madrid (ES), the ZKM Karlsruhe (D), the Edith-Russ-Haus Oldenburg (D) and the Observatory Festival in Valencia (ES).
Book publication “ERDE”, Kunst und Ausstellungshalle der Bundesrepublik Deutschland, 2002, “Don’t forget about Earth!”, conversation Bernd Busch – Franz John. (excerpt)
Several million earthquakes of different intensities occur each year. Seismological institutes throughout the world measure these vibrations and exchange and communicate this collected data among themselves via automated internet–transfers.It is this meta–perception that Franz John makes visible in his project Turing Tables siphoning this human–machine–communication data stream directly from internet servers of seismographic institutes and bringing it into his online installation. In a matter of seconds, this installation converts these measurements from the seismological stations into sound and image. From the perspective of a “global eye” the internet directly connects the observer with the pulsating core of the earth. This project is therefore not about the catastrophes that cause these movements in inhabited areas, but instead about the archaic feeling and consciousness that the earth is an organism, that it moves and that it can be understood as an organism in constant flux. «This artistic realization is based on the machine–theory of the mathematician Alan Turing(*), wherein my interest is not in the number–chain itself but rather in the tectonic forces and energies of a matrix which is visibly and continually updating and renewing itself.«
Annotation(*): Alan Turing (1912-1954) is today regarded as one of the most influential theorists of early computer development and computer science.
The Turing Tables project was developed over several years through cooperation and exchange with numerous scientists and researchers. Special thanks to: Dr. Charles Estabrook, seismologist, San Francisco; John C. Lahr, seismologist, U.S. Geological Survey; Dr. Winfried Hanka, seismologist, GFZ Potsdam; Dr. Udo Thiedeke, sociologist, Universität Mainz, ArtBit. Special thanks also to Mona Mur (musician) and to Dirk Schubert (programmer) for their collaboration on the first version of Turing Tables 2000 – 2002. The current version of Turing Tables (since 2003) was developed in collaboration with sound artist Ed Osborn (Oakland, CA) and brsma (Berlin)