‘Turingalila’ visual music on the theme of morphogenesis

Abstract

Alan Turing’s paper ’The Chemical basis of Morphogenesis’, written in 1952, is a masterpiece of mathematical modelling which defines how selfregulated pattern formation occurs in the developing animal embryo. Its most revolutionary feature is the concept of ‘morphogens’ that are responsible for producing an almost limitless array of animal and fish markings. Turingalila, a piece of Visual Music, takes morphogenesis as its theme. The diversity of forms evident in my projected images are based on just two Turing Patterns which are ‘perturbed’ to reveal processes of self-organisation reminiscent of those found in nature. A live performance of Turingalila forms the focal point of my oral presentation. It is prefaced by an examination of how artistic potential has been unleashed by Turing’s biological insights and concludes with comments on how Turing’s ideas are exerting an ever increasing impact in today’s world.