The Italian Renaissance started a rebirth of culture and knowledge not experienced since Roman times. Leonardo da Vinci was arguably the leading polymath of the era. We are now in the throes of a Digital Renaissance, arguably started by Alan Turing in England. This paper draws some parallels between these two periods and speculates on the future of digital developments, especially in the context of the EVA Florence conference in Italy and the EVA London conference in the UK.

1. The Digital Renaissance from da Vinci to Turing
Tula Giannini
School of Information
Pratt Institute
New York, USA
giannini@pratt.edu
Jonathan P. Bowen
School of Engineering
London South Bank University
London, UK
jonathan.bowen@lsbu.ac.uk
Installation view of the
exhibition Leonardo da
Vinci and Perpetual
Motion – drawings
from the Codex
Atlanticus, Milan
Ambrosiana.
Geometric drawings,
Machines, Reflections.
Right: Geometric drawings with perpetual motion drawing, left: folio 1062r, Museo Galileo, 10 October 2019 – 12 January 2020

2. Leonardo da Vinci and Alan Turing
Leonardo da Vinci
(1452–1519, 67 years)
Alan Turing
(1912–1954, 41 years)
Both:
•Geniuses
•Polymaths
•Gay
•Persecuted

3. DIGITAL DA VINCI – THE CODICES AND ARTWORKS
Codex Atlanticus digitised by Biblioteca Ambrosiana in Milan with design firm
Visual Agency to produce a highly effective interactive visualisation of the Codex
Fig. 1. Codex Atlanticus – Screen shot of its interactive visualisation - http://www.codex-atlanticus.it/#/Overview

4. Fig. 9. Excerpt from letter dated 8 February 1951, Turing to
Professor J. Z. Young on brain structure and the storage
capacity from Turing’s work, a mathematical theory of
embryology. AMT/K/78: image
78a(http://www.turingarchive.org/viewer/?id=439&title=78a)
Fig. 10b. Daisy ring diagram by Alan
Turing. Coloured diagram in connection
with work on morphogenesis. AMT/K/3
image 3, Turing Digital Archive.
Fig. 10a. Codex Atlanticus, folio 459r. This is
one of da Vinci's drawings of geometrical
structures related to the ornamental
structure named today “flower of life”.
Turing and da Vinci: Kindred Spirits – The Turing Test, devised to the compare human and machine intelligence
deploying AI and machine learning, begs the question, can robots be “more than human”? At the heart of artificial life (A-Life)
is the process of simulating nature, what might be called “digital nature” as we see in the latest research on using mapping
neural networks of the human brain using AI. The connections their work makes across art, nature, science and technology, is
still ground-breaking in our 21st-century world.

5. “Unlocking the Brain – The human brain is an
incredibly sophisticated machine that excels at a
multitude of tasks. Scientists .. . are attempting to
recreate its most complex processes to potentially
improve AI.” From All too Human exhibition.
Modeling AI from Human Neural Networks

6. Leonardo’s Love Affair with the Mother and Child
For da Vinci, the subject of mother and child is pictured in 10
of his 14 known paintings and in drawings on the foetus and
womb thought to reflect his emotional ties to his own mother,
suggesting he painted the Mona Lisa in her likeness.
Mother and Child
(by Tula Giannini, 2019)
My child –
Cry not silently
I can’t see your face
Can’t embrace
Your head hangs down
Your face hidden between hands
No Instagram
My Mother –
Dreaming of you
I hear your silent voice
Hold me close
Lift me up
Let me breathe
Breathe in your smell
Hold me close to your breast
Let me drink
your heavenly nectar of life
and think, of you

7. DIGITAL HUMANISM IN SCIENCE AND ART
Soundscapes of Leonardo da Vinci’s World
Fig. 4. Drawing by Leonardo da Vinci of various musical
wind instruments. Arundel Codex, 175r. British Library.
Fig. 5. The Three Ages of Man (or Reading a Song), painting by
(c.1501). Left to right, Jacob Obrecht (b. c1457, Flemish-Dutch
composer), Sebastiano Luciano, and Philippe Verdelot.
Galleria Palantina, Palazzo Pitti, Florence.
Visualising the sights and sounds of da Vinci’s environs, we hear the music of Philippe Verdelot (b.1475, France; d.1552,
Florence). Spending his career in Italy, he worked in Rome and Florence supported by the Medici and is recognised as
the father of the madrigal, a musical form that inspired Monteverdi and Gesualdo. The drawing of musical instruments,
Fig.4, shows Leonardo’s interest in wind instruments and his advanced knowledge of key mechanisms.

8. Dedication
• Kim Veltman (1948–2020)
• Friend of EVA
• Historian of art and science
• Leonardo da Vinci scholar
• Sadly victim of COVID-19
Appreciation: Thank you to Vito Cappellini
and the EVA Florence team from EVA LondonKim Veltman delivering his keynote talk at the
EVA London Conference on 11 July 2017
EVA London 2020 Conference delayed from 6–10 July
till week of 16 November. URL: www.eva-london.org
Proceedings under DOI 10.14236/ewic/EVA2020.0

9. Associated publications by Giannini & Bowen
• The Digital Renaissance from da Vinci to Turing, EVA Florence, SocArXiv Papers,
2020, DOI 10.31235/osf.io/h5fm4
• Computing the Future: Digital encounters in art and science when da Vinci meets
Turing, EVA London , BCS eWiC, 2020, pp. 16–23, DOI 10.14236/ewic/EVA2020.3
• Museums and Digital Culture: New Perspectives and Research, Springer Series on
Cultural Computing, 2019, DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-97457-6
• A Personal View of EVA London: Past, Present, Future, EVA London, BCS eWiC,
2020, pp. 8–15, DOI 10.14236/ewic/EVA2020.2