In May 1997, Garry Kasparov became the first reigning world chess champion to lose a match to a machine, resigning to the US-designed IBM Deep Blue supercomputer during the sixth game in just 19 moves. Following the match, the machine was destroyed, and Deep Blue never played again.

The Memory of Deep Blue provides an analogue, photographic record of this landmark victory for artificial intelligence. Composed as a series of photograms and contact sheets, each print retraces a move by the computer (white) as it slowly defeats Kasparov. With every move, Kasparov’s pieces fade to black, resigned to the limitless endurance of a machine designed to outwit him at every turn.

In my practice, I attempt to question the duality between machine and artist, digital and analogue, machine and chess player at a historical point in which the role of the photographer stands poised to be transformed by AI.

Alan Knox is a Scottish artist and photographer whose work explores the feeling of the sublime and uncanny. In 2015 he graduated from the Glasgow School of Art, where he was awarded the Chairman’s Medal, and in 2020 completed his MA in Photography Arts at the University of Westminster, London. His work has been exhibited internationally, including as a winner of the Daniel Blau Gallery 5 Under 30 award in London; as an awardee of the Magenta Flash Forward prize at Division Gallery, Toronto; as part of the jury selection of Festival Circulations, Paris; and at StreetLevel Photoworks, Glasgow; Lonsdale Gallery, Toronto; and Kaunas Gallery, Lithuania, among others. In 2025 his work was selected as part of the Ashurst Art Collection.

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