London ? Painter and sculptor Keith Tyson, whose playful artwork is inspired by scientific theories and often ponders the role of computers in the modern world, won Britain’s prestigious Turner Prize on Sunday.

Among Tyson’s works are a computer that generates random artistic ideas and prompted him to create lead casts of every item on a KFC restaurant’s menu.

Tyson, 33, used his brief acceptance speech to praise his fellow contestants and wish his 87-year-old grandmother a happy birthday.

“She has undying faith in me but has no comprehension of what I do for a living,” he said later.

The annual Turner Prize – which comes with a $31,000 award – often has been criticized for overlooking conventional art forms.

“Art, if you really think about it, is an alarm clock that wakes us up from the inertia of our everyday life,” architect Daniel Libeskind said in presenting the award. “Without art and without avant-garde, cutting-edge art, there really would be no future.”

Painter and sculptor Keith Tyson stands in front of his work Bubble

Tyson, who comes from northwestern England but lives in Brighton on the south coast, offered his own take on Auguste Rodin’s sculpture “The Thinker,” displaying, among other pieces, a large monolithic block packed with whirring computer parts.

The Turner judges praised “the strong visual energy of his work” and said they “admired the way in which his work embraces the poetic, the logical, the humorous and the fantastical and draws connections between them.”

The Turner Prize is considered to be one of the most important and prestigious awards for the visual arts in Europe, but it is derided regularly for focusing on the unconventional. Some of the more unusual entries in recent years have included a soiled bed, a pickled cow and a painting decorated with elephant dung.