ARTWORKER OF THE WEEK #6

Keith Tyson @ Tate Britain

The Thinker (After Rodin), 2001
Enamel sprayed aluminium, steel, computers, software (300 x 125 x 110 cm)

Keith Tyson is one of the four artists short-listed for this year's Turner Prize, and was nominated on the basis of achievements that included a display at the Venice Biennale in 2001. Tyson's works are quasi-scientific in nature, reflecting his desire to by-pass stylistic and biographical issues and create works that use logic to test our philosophical understanding of the world. Mark Sladen met the artist and asked him about The Thinker (After Rodin), 2001, one of the works which make up his presentation at Tate Britain. The winner of the Turner Prize will be announced on 8th December.

MS: What is The Thinker?

KT: The Thinker is a twelve foot high black column that houses a series of computers inside it, running an artificial life programme which has been programmed in such a way that it evolves. There is no physical manifestation of the fact that it is thinking, and I'm fascinated by this idea that when you come across it you have a thing that is thinking but which is impenetrable -- that you can't get within its skin. Once the thing sets off, I can predict what it's thinking for about half an hour but after that I've got no idea -- so I'm as much in the dark as everyone else as to what it's actually thinking about.

MS: I understand that it is part of a series of works entitled The Seven Wonders of the World.

KT: That is a series of works that relate to things I find wondrous. I wanted to make works that were not illustrative of some scientific or philosophical theory but embodied it -- were in fact the actual theory made manifest. The Thinker really thinks, and is thought. The fact that human beings have reached a stage where they can find a mathematical methodology for creating thought itself, and that we can comprehend our own existence, are some of the things I’m trying to make manifest in this work. It also relates to this idea that we can never actually prove what the internal dialogue of another human being actually is. It's about the way in which everybody's universe is impenetrable, and the way everyone who thinks has their own separate universe.

MS: Would it matter if The Thinker didn't do what it is supposed to be doing?

KT: The fact that people might think that says more about the history of charlatanism within the arts than it does about my piece. The very question "is it actually thinking?" is the point of the piece. When you come up to someone there is no way of proving that they're thinking. This idea that people want proof, and that there's no faith in anything, is really at the heart of a lot of my work. We all have to have faith that there is a reality out there and that we exist and have a history -- otherwise for all we know we came into being three seconds ago, and I've spent eternity answering your last question over and over again.

Mark Sladen is a curator at Barbican Art Gallery

Turner Prize 2002, until 5 January 2003
Tate Britain, Millbank, London SW1, 020.7887.8000


Collection Thea Westreich and Ethan Wagner
Image © the artist, courtesy Anthony Reynolds Gallery, London

© 2002 KultureFlash Limited