A black cube roughly the size of a garden shed greets visitors entering the »Man in the Machine« exhibition in Budapest’s Kunsthalle. A glance through a peephole reveals the central object in this exhibition on Wolfgang von Kempelen (1734–1804), an Austro-Hungarian official at the court of Maria Theresa: a life-size reproduction of the »Chess Turk«, that very first –purported– chess robot of world history, which Kempelen built in 1769, causing a great stir in his day. As reported by the Kempelen archive in Vienna, in 2000 there were already more than 1,300 documents addressing the chess robot. It is common knowledge that this automaton was not really a distant ancestor of robots and artificial intelligence research, as the feat that has made the »Chess Turk« famous to this day is based on a trick: it was not the mechanical doll robed in turban and caftan that played (and won, inter alia beating Maria Theresa and Napoleon), but actually a flesh-and-blood chess player. Kempelen’s art was of the mechanical kind cultivated by illusionists even today: how can you conceal an adult in a cabinet so cunningly that everyone is convinced the cabinet must be empty? But the –supposedly – life-size reproduction of the »Chess Turk« at the entrance to the exhibition in Budapest is also not quite what it seems: visitors are actually confronted with a miniature, which would have more than enough space in a small showcase. It appears »life-size« due to an optical illusion, a charmingly ironic opening for an exhibition that has grown to Herculean proportions even just in terms of its sheer size (2,200 square metres of exhibition space to fill).

Looking back over the broken promises of artificial intelligence research, promises that were perhaps simply impossible to keep, who would be surprised to find it all began with an act of deception? However, in contrast to some of today’s evangelists of artificial intelligence, »Kempelen Farkas«, as the Hungarian version of his name goes, always openly admitted that he was using a trick – without explaining what it was. After his death, Johann Nepomuk Mälzel (1772–1838), an Austrian, took on the »Chess Turk« and exhibited it in America, where the automaton was destroyed by fire in 1854. As a good magician, Mälzel had been as reticent as Kempelen before him about laying his cards bare. That is why Edgar Allan Poe was still putting forward detailed arguments in 1850 as to why it would be impossible for the chess automaton to actually be playing.

Kempelen, described by the exhibition’s co-curator, Rita Kálmán, as an incredibly hard-working court official, studied fine arts in Italy, and discussed improvements to the steam engine with James Watt in England. He set much greater store by his »speaking machines«, his other great invention. It is their boldly utopian nature that sets Kempelen’s two automatons apart from those produced by von Vaucanson, Jaquet-Droz or Knauss, and this is what makes them intriguing even today: the »Chess Turk« simulates nothing less than the possibility of reproducing the human intellect in a machine, while the speaking machine is an attempt to generate the sounds of human speech mechanically.

The exhibition curated by József Mélyi and Kálmán depicts Kempelen as a child of his time, the 18th century. Its vitality stems from a combination of this historical dimension with numerous contemporary artworks, either directly inspired by Kempelen or linked to him. Ken Feingold’s »Box of Men« for example is a computer animation with six puppets discussing a court case. Their comments are generated in real time. Feingold provides an intelligent demonstration of how easily even simple programmes can create the impression that the figures really are putting forward arguments and thinking. Other artworks reference the history of the chess computer, such as »Turing Train Terminal«, which portrays the Turing machine in the form of a model railway – Turing had also laboured on chess computer programmes, just like the other founding fathers of computing, Zuse, von Neumann or Shannon.

The exhibition will be showing from 23rd June to 19th August in ZKM, Karlsruhe. There Mélyi and Kálmán will only have half the exhibition space at their disposal. And in ZKM the contemporary artworks will take centre-stage, for Kempelen is not a national hero and a star in Germany as he is in Hungary, the land of real and purported chess masters. However, even in a more compact form with less of a historical thrust, this will certainly be a convincing exhibition.

 

Translated by Helen Ferguson

 

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