Rahul Rahanu

Inspired by Nicholas Schöffer's CYSPP1, this work has at the very core three Perspex boxes, each encasing computer mother boards and Pencil on paper portraits. Two of the these portraits are of renowned poets: Rabindranath Tagore, the Nobel laureate in Literature who throughout his life traversed two worlds (India's mystical, divine values and the spirit of the West); and Benjamin Zephaniah, whose work is infused with his personal experiences of anti-Black racism in Britain. The third box presents self portraits completed by members of the public that attended a workshop at the Tate Modern.

The three boxes are linked to a screen, which flashes three respective sets of random words. Yet upon closer inspection and analysis of these arbitrary words the viewer can identify patterns including a quote from the mathematician Theodore Motzkin, which is found in all three, suggesting that all poetry (art) regardless of its political, social, cultural differences has at its very core a common universal thread.

Is all poetry based upon seemingly random words, where the reader is programmed to look for embedded patterns, in order for the poem to have meaning and personal resonance?

The artwork explores the very nature of art (poetry and the written word). Are the process of conception and production of a poem a mere computational exercise? We acknowledge that a programmed digital computer, AI application, can produce a poem and appear to understand language but vehemently argue that it can not have real understanding.

We are at the cusp, where from physiological and psychological perspectives we will be able to formally, and comprehensively, model what is human consciousness and intentionality. And once we have this it may well reveal to us that humans are nothing more than elaborate biological, mechanical artefacts.