PLEASE DISTRIBUTE TO STUDENTS, COLLEAGUES, AND THEATER LOVERS

After having successfully open yesterday our newest exhibit entitled Go Ask A.L.I.C.E.: Turing Tests, Parlor Games & Chatterbots, I would like to invite you for a very special two night theatrical performances @ the Collection of Historical Scientific Instruments, Harvard University.
http://www.fas.harvard.edu/~hsdept/chsi_goa.html


Go Ask A.L.I.C.E.: The Inner Workings

Come for the machines; stay for the humans!

Wednesday, September 19, 6:00 - 8:00 pm @ Science Center 251
Thursday, September 20, 6:00 - 8:00 pm @ Science Center 251
{identical program each night}

Wine & Cheese will be served.


6 pm Reception Witness live demonstrations of two machines from the exhibit: an Enigma encryption machine, and Mike Davey's artistic rendering of a Turing Machine. These two machines represent pillars of Alan Turing's life and legacy. The first is a built, functioning version of a thought-experiment described by Turing in 1936.  The theoretical Turing Machine is capable of simulating any process that can be performed by any computer. Davey's artistic interpretation of this machine highlights the simplicity, strength, and intrigue of that thought experiment. During the 1940s, Turing participated in the British wartime effort to decrypt the German Enigma machine. Dick Rubenstein will demonstrate a mint-condition Enigma and provide insight into its inner workings and rich history.

7:00 Theater Performance Actors from the American Repertory Theater graduate institute perform an original piece that explores some of the themes and questions animating the exhibit. Turing's famous "test" for machine thinking relies on written discourse as the hallmark of intelligence, using teletype machines or computer terminals to hide and mask the physical features of the interlocutors. This theatrical piece inverts that structure by routing text through human bodies and voices. The performers bring to life transcripts of computer-human dialogue, archival materials, letters, and scripted scenes. In so doing, they give body to the question "Can Machines Think?"


For more information, please contact me.

Hoping to see you in great numbers,

jfg
--
Jean-François Gauvin, Ph.D.
Director of Administration for the Collection of Historical Scientific Instruments
Lecturer for the Department of the History of Science
Harvard University
Science Center 371
1 Oxford Street
Cambridge, MA 02138

http://jfgauvin2008.wordpress.com/
http://www.fas.harvard.edu/~hsdept/chsi.html
Tel: (617) 496-1021    Fax: (617) 496-5932
Cell: (857) 998-8523