Invention is often built on an existing idea, a small kernel around which the innovation grows. If you were to follow one of these filaments it would lead you backwards and forwards, through repetitions and variations, like some kind of illogical map. The iteration of an idea contains both the familiar and the strange. To a curious mind ingenuity is a problem solving game.
The knight piece in chess traverses the board in diagonals. A knight’s tour is a mathematical riddle in which the knight must navigate the chessboard in such a way that it lands in every square once only. It is at once an intellectual puzzle and a parlour trick.
Justine Giles, 2014. Diagram of the Mechanical Turk a chess-playing automaton that bested Charles Babbage twice [ink on paper, 455 x 560mm]
Justine Giles, 2014. I went home to find the Chess Challenger 7 and came back with my father’s old calculator [framed calculator, 250 x 300mm]
Installation view
Justine Giles, 2014. Image of Charles Babbage as seen in the Science Museum, London in 2009 [graphite on paper and panel, 250 x 300 mm]
Justine Giles, 2014. The right hemisphere of Charles Babbage’s brain as seen preserved in the Science Museum, London in 2009 [graphite on paper and panel, 250 x 300mm]
Installation view
Justine Giles, 2014. Chess Challenger 7 reconstructed from memory with the help of two siblings and Google [watercolour and graphite on paper, foam core board, 380 x 240 x 65mm]
Installation view
Justine Giles, 2014. June 2014, Turing test beaten? [screen-shot print on paper, 420 x 297mm]
Rhubarb Pyjamas 