I wonder if Tyson believes in god, or perhaps some none conceited name for divinity – the universe, the multi-verse, the Tao? An interesting interpretation of Cloud Choreography and other emergent systems, by Keith Tyson (showing at Plimsoll Uni, Wharf Street), is one of authorship…who makes the art, where does creation come from, can confining and enshrining flukes, acts of randomness and results from machine-like protocols and artificial systems really count as the work of an artist?

Who is the artist?

Tyson, the guy who puts the machine together, the cosmic croupier as artist?

God as the ultimate creationist artist?

Evolution as the Darwinian monkey business artist?

A computer performing to a set of programmed operating criteria – Game and Information theory as artist?

Chaos – arbitrary, stochastic, quantum appearing data as artist?

One thing is for sure, Tyson isn’t really that bothered or egotistical enough to put himself too resolutely in the picture, he likes losing control, letting god, nature, artifice, chaos and evolution hold the reigns. Its all refreshingly humble and buddha-like, this non-narcissism. Besides a personal resonance with gambling, in particular the roulette- Tyson is a recovering gambling addict -  his work has been influenced only obliquely by his life, it is a mercifully impersonal influence. We get none of Tracey Emin’s self obsessive commentary, or Gilbert and George aping and clowning in every frame. Tyson is too busy getting out of the way of the primeval force rushing head long through the portals he opens.

Its taken not human skill to open these elemental doorways but the collective conscious and subconscious of the species, nature in all its multifaceted forms, Newtonian and quantum mechanics, thermodynamics, chaos theory, and blind dumb luck.

This exhibition at Plimsoll Uni focuses on “the systems and processes that inform the creation of his work.” In the cloud formations, the repeat patterns of precipitation developing in the skies, in nuclear mushroom clouds, airplane vapour lines, cumulonimbus clouds and in coffee cups. One gets the feeling Tyson is talking not just about repetition of form, not just looking for clues in nature’s handiwork, but how all things influences each other, are interconnected. A butterfly flapping its wings resulting in a  hurricane. A cup of coffee causing a nuclear holocaust: quantum causality for want of a better phrase. Who knows what minor integer or input can cause radical, transformative change extrapolated over a given vector of time?

Its this cosmic sense of significance and wonder that informs much of Tyson’s work and yet you sometimes feel as if your being battered about the head with the same bit of science continuously. There’s a plethora of works featuring nonsensical mathematical formulae that compete with diagrams and kitsch illustrations. There’s chalk boards, algebra as paintings and sculptures of fractal dice. And yet there are times when it seems as exciting as a physics text book or a particularly turgid treatise on meteorology.

Tyson’s talent is in putting all these eclectic pieces together, invoking this sense of scientific animism, reflecting the inner workings of the creative microcosm to the creative macrocosm. His talent is not particularly in the execution. So much falls to chance many of the images simply fail, stylistically, formally or aesthetically. Many are almost wilfully crude or ham-fisted. When the 35-1 miracle comes off though, we see incredible miraculous stuff, work part authored by the genius of creation, or god (if you want to be so last century). The paintings on aluminium that mix chemical reactions with oil and water paints reflect this brilliance.

Yet Tyson seems stubbornly unwilling to edit, to be brutal faced with the onslaught of images produced by the subconscious, by the systems he sets up that sometimes result in dead ends. Instead of throwing these away, Tyson bundles them all in as if the mistakes, the aberrations and the failures are as important. Like it doesn’t matter one way or another. As if the mathematical workings are more poignant than the results. Or evolution’s dead ends and extinct species are as vital as the living ones.

It somehow strangely lacks conviction, opinion, bias and involvement. At times, appearing sterile, flat and calculating, more divorced than involved. As if nothing human hearted had been near the pictures, or if it had it was left enshrined by chance.

There also a sense that Tyson bypasses the greater mass of human culture and associations. That in plotting the interactions of nature he either misses the human element, or merely dismisses it as inconsequential. Of course there are moments in the exhibition that contradict that view – a transcript from a blind man, contains both humanity, literature, soaring poetry, insight and lyricism – but its inclusion seems more at the roll of Tyson’s fractal dice than any broad developing theme.

Between the coffee cups and clouds, the abstract paint reactions and the chalkboards there some art here that’s as good as anything being made today, but you’ll have to wade through some junk to see it. Whoever the creator is, he perhaps needs to evoke the destroyer more readily. Still one could argue this isn’t exclusively Tyson’s work at all? Its co-creators are systems, formulas and machines. It represents plagiarism of nature and of god.

But then I’ve heard say, “there are no atheists in the casino.”

Until 11th September @ Plimsoll Uni. Wharf Street.

Highly Recommended.