"Organised as a chessboard, each of the 64 squares narrates one year of Beard's life, in 1,000 words per year. (He's 58, so the last five years are fictionalised.) The reader moves around the board as if they were a knight, picking the next year to read from options limited by the knight's L-shaped ambulation. The way you go round it, what you want to know, will tell you something about yourself, he says."
"Each entry or square contains signposts to future and past entries; you can pick your subplot or skip to the juiciest bits, read faithfully or game the machine. The public are free to respond to the constraints of the board however they choose, merging or repeating years, provided they submit 64 years to fit the shape of the board, each of no more than 1,000 words."
"The project takes its title from the test that Alan Turing devised to discern artificial intelligence from human intelligence. The idea is that if you write your memoir, you are passing the Turing test, Beard says. You are showing that you're human through the life that you've lived, through the memories that you have. In a way, it's a resistance to AI-generated content."
The Universal Turing Machine arranges 64 yearly life narratives on a chessboard, each square limited to 1,000 words. Readers progress by knight's moves, selecting subsequent years from L-shaped options and following signposts between past and future entries. Contributors must submit 64 years shaped to the board, with allowances for merged or repeated years, and the public grid expands as entries accumulate. The project positions personal memory as proof of humanness analogous to the Turing test and as a form of resistance to AI-generated content. The initial set reaches age 58 with the final five years fictionalised and emphasizes emotional accuracy.
Read at www.theguardian.com
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