The Art of Chess
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The Art of Chess
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The Art of Chess launched the newly opened Gilbert Collection at Somerset House, on The Strand in London.
This exhibition and tournament served to fill in lots of the missing pieces of the jigsaw puzzle.
I stood and watched 12 year old British, junior Grandmaster, David Howells take on 20 players, from children to old men simultaneously over an hour and a half.
Simultaneous Chess
A square of tables housed the chess boards with the challengers seated around the outside. David started each game with a shake of the hand and then circled the boards usually making each move within seconds. Old men clutched their heads, young girls harrassed by anxious mothers, dawdled to their doom, the swoops of young boys’ smugness transforming into humiliation and despair.
Feeling stupid and Tor Norretranders descriptions of complexity As I observed the boards I tried to imagine how any of the players planned their moves or strategies and felt my mind transform quickly from solid, secure, familliar patterns into eddying racing, fluid currents. Everytime I focussed on a board, my mind completely dissolved. I panicked and drowned.
Now Tor Norretranders(1) tells us that complexity occurs when you have both ice and water in the same glass, at the transitional point between, solidity and fluidity.
The mathematical equivalents would be
solid stops quickly total order 2+2=4
fluid goes for ever never results in 10/3 = 3.33333333... anything other than flow
melting/borderline we have no idea compexity arises when it will stop
In order for complexity to arise we have to be able to store information and erase information. “It is on the boundary of order and chaos that really interesting things happen. Here on the edge of chaos, we can carry out computations where new structures can arise.” (2)
So what this tells me is that in order to allow an understanding of the complexity of chess to arise in my mind I must learn to tolerate the confusion and to observe and absorbe any patterns in the game.
Chess problems- and more feeling stupid
As I sat in a small audience with the chess problem lecturer, Martin Rice (?) I heard myself excuse myself as a ‘wood pusher’ (3) I was reminded of when I was at school and usually able to do my lessons at least well enough to be in the top half of the class. There were some girls who struggled with every subject. Their minds seemed to be either in a constant state of flighty flow, or great lumps of solid and immutable matter. Their humilliation was complete and enforced everyday in my mind.
So to sit as demonstrably the dumbest person in the class was quite a lesson. Oh how horrible to be pitied and patronised for my dumbness. My defence was like those I’ve heard from beginner drawers. I just can’t do it, I’m no good, my mind isn’t wired that way. I deflect the pressure by raising the question about why there were so few women players in the tournament. Only to realise that I appear to have blamed my ignorance on my gender. Doh! the teacher carefully tells me that men are believed to be stronger in spacial awareness. He can’t remember what women are supposed to be stronger in ;-)
But I did learn the following about chess problems-
the following data can move from the fluid to solid areas of my consciousness:- white is always attacking, black defending white checkmates king in 2 moves the white piece’s first move is rarely an obvious attack on the black king
How feeling dumb qualifies me for this project Anyway , on reflection I realise that all this difficulty actually qualifies me eminently for my chosen task. If I was a chess grandmaster, I would shy away from this project because I would have to start all over again to get any good at the new game. Oh the humilliation of being a dunce. All that reputation and status out of the window. In fact I would attack this new game as inferior, trivial, tricksy, quirky, missing the point, irrelevant, of no interest or relevance to the serious chess playing community.
[Images with speach bubbles - chess pieces dissing a new pacifist game]
I wonder if then the same parallels can be drawn across to society. The grandmasters of western society, are unlikely to study new rules for the game of cooperation, collaboration and peace as they have demonstrated their skills and gained a reputation in heirachical studies of war, dominance. May be interesting to look at people who seem to have made the transition: Tom White (American philanthropist), Michael Ondatje. Any more??????
This is also interesting in relation to the question of why women don’t play .
Competition Before I went I read on the internet that the child champion David Howells had recently defeated the top English Grandmaster, Jon speelman aged 47 “three times British champion World Championship semi-finalist with a victory over Gary Kasparov to his credit” (4) The shame of the older man crushed by the evolved flush and spirit of youth.
The social game is all about ratings and heirachies. I was reminded of Gregory Peck in the Gunslinger, harrassed by young competitive shooters wanting the credit for taking him out.
The large chessboard which had been the venue for the battle of the child champs gave way to the chaos and delighted childish shrieking and running about in the fountains in the courtyard.
Notes for images(piccies to follow)
bigboard-- chess pieces as onlookers,audience to the random, chaotic movements of the human beings around the board.
child champions attracting an unusual and fawning level attention from media adults.
look at the clubs, social groups around chess
avi’s have good audio for posh simutaneous chess instructions
the handshake before the game
players stock still before they make their move then like a swipe or a maul to move the piece.
the little girl, had fingernails painted black and white. Her mother harrassed her with her anxiety while she tried to play, ”move now, yes now, once he’s played his move, you can move, .No not yet, yes now. If you’ve written it down you can move, well if you’ve written it down there’s no need to move just yet. Now, move now.” The girl took it all in her stride
one young man wrote a commentary of his regrets and insecurities, where he should have written his moves as he succumbed to Daniel King’s onslaught- should have had more coffee,etc, then a final cry of mercy to Steven, please be nice to me.
All the other ‘simultaneous’ players dutifully kept their play sheets. Records of their complex journeys in a simple structure.
THE ART(piccies to follow)
The 18 chess sets (five commissioned by contemporary artists) were arranged to map out Napoleans appocryphal last battle.
Jake and Dinos Chapman
sexualisation of the pieces through the genitalised, rectalised, bollokised faces of the young girls really highlights the agressive and animalistc energetics of chess. Also real characterisation of black and white opposition as racial. Afros and whitey bobs and flicks.
The skull and crossbone checkers of the board emphasize the forward motion of the players into each other’s territory. The knights are piggybacks.
Still need to map out the artistic and conceptual strategies employed by the artists
Changes to board
Georch Macunius (Fluxus)- each square becomes a container for colloured beads
Damien Hirst replaces the squares with a medical logo- you loose the grid and it becomes harder even than before to determine an advantageous move
Maurizio Cattelan gives each piece a celebrity identity - good versus evil, the kings are Hitler and Martin Luther King.
Yoko Ono’s game breaks down in a rather frustrating way. Seeming to imply that collaboration and cooperation really only exist in the realms of fantasy.
That a game without conflict cannot hold our attention or interest.
That a game without conflict CANNOT be DYNAMIC- we obviously need to live in a state of complexity which means between solidity and flux.
Considering that Yoko Ono’s is the only one that proposes an alternative to conflict it makes me wonder if collaborative games exist, if peace is nothing more than a fantasy.
Perhaps our current state vacillates too much between solidity and fluidity. the citizens of the USA live in a solid, consuming, secure state whilst the poor embattled 3rd world is in too much flux. Maintaining difference for dynamism’s sake.
topics
why women don’t play chess ?
complexity- emergence from simple rules/conditions/movements
why finding the right question is so hard- to hold the attention of the strategic mind the smugness of the expert develops with status, reputation, a masculine power, a mythos the eroticism of chess- female attraction to the mechanistic killer
1. pg373, The User Illusion by Tor Norretranders, published by Penguin 1999
2. pg374, ibid
3) Duchamp’s derrogatory assesment of Man Ray’s abilities as a chess player. (the art of Chess catalogue)
4) British Chess Magazine online (last edited :Friday June 27th 2003 12:11)
View images
The Art of Chess launched the newly opened Gilbert Collection at Somerset House, on The Strand in London.
This exhibition and tournament served to fill in lots of the missing pieces of the jigsaw puzzle.
I stood and watched 12 year old British, junior Grandmaster, David Howells take on 20 players, from children to old men simultaneously over an hour and a half.
Simultaneous Chess
A square of tables housed the chess boards with the challengers seated around the outside. David started each game with a shake of the hand and then circled the boards usually making each move within seconds. Old men clutched their heads, young girls harrassed by anxious mothers, dawdled to their doom, the swoops of young boys’ smugness transforming into humiliation and despair.
Feeling stupid and Tor Norretranders descriptions of complexity As I observed the boards I tried to imagine how any of the players planned their moves or strategies and felt my mind transform quickly from solid, secure, familliar patterns into eddying racing, fluid currents. Everytime I focussed on a board, my mind completely dissolved. I panicked and drowned.
Now Tor Norretranders(1) tells us that complexity occurs when you have both ice and water in the same glass, at the transitional point between, solidity and fluidity.
The mathematical equivalents would be
solid stops quickly total order 2+2=4
fluid goes for ever never results in 10/3 = 3.33333333... anything other than flow
melting/borderline we have no idea compexity arises when it will stop
In order for complexity to arise we have to be able to store information and erase information. “It is on the boundary of order and chaos that really interesting things happen. Here on the edge of chaos, we can carry out computations where new structures can arise.” (2)
So what this tells me is that in order to allow an understanding of the complexity of chess to arise in my mind I must learn to tolerate the confusion and to observe and absorbe any patterns in the game.
Chess problems- and more feeling stupid
As I sat in a small audience with the chess problem lecturer, Martin Rice (?) I heard myself excuse myself as a ‘wood pusher’ (3) I was reminded of when I was at school and usually able to do my lessons at least well enough to be in the top half of the class. There were some girls who struggled with every subject. Their minds seemed to be either in a constant state of flighty flow, or great lumps of solid and immutable matter. Their humilliation was complete and enforced everyday in my mind.
So to sit as demonstrably the dumbest person in the class was quite a lesson. Oh how horrible to be pitied and patronised for my dumbness. My defence was like those I’ve heard from beginner drawers. I just can’t do it, I’m no good, my mind isn’t wired that way. I deflect the pressure by raising the question about why there were so few women players in the tournament. Only to realise that I appear to have blamed my ignorance on my gender. Doh! the teacher carefully tells me that men are believed to be stronger in spacial awareness. He can’t remember what women are supposed to be stronger in ;-)
But I did learn the following about chess problems-
the following data can move from the fluid to solid areas of my consciousness:- white is always attacking, black defending white checkmates king in 2 moves the white piece’s first move is rarely an obvious attack on the black king
How feeling dumb qualifies me for this project Anyway , on reflection I realise that all this difficulty actually qualifies me eminently for my chosen task. If I was a chess grandmaster, I would shy away from this project because I would have to start all over again to get any good at the new game. Oh the humilliation of being a dunce. All that reputation and status out of the window. In fact I would attack this new game as inferior, trivial, tricksy, quirky, missing the point, irrelevant, of no interest or relevance to the serious chess playing community.
[Images with speach bubbles - chess pieces dissing a new pacifist game]
I wonder if then the same parallels can be drawn across to society. The grandmasters of western society, are unlikely to study new rules for the game of cooperation, collaboration and peace as they have demonstrated their skills and gained a reputation in heirachical studies of war, dominance. May be interesting to look at people who seem to have made the transition: Tom White (American philanthropist), Michael Ondatje. Any more??????
This is also interesting in relation to the question of why women don’t play .
Competition Before I went I read on the internet that the child champion David Howells had recently defeated the top English Grandmaster, Jon speelman aged 47 “three times British champion World Championship semi-finalist with a victory over Gary Kasparov to his credit” (4) The shame of the older man crushed by the evolved flush and spirit of youth.
The social game is all about ratings and heirachies. I was reminded of Gregory Peck in the Gunslinger, harrassed by young competitive shooters wanting the credit for taking him out.
The large chessboard which had been the venue for the battle of the child champs gave way to the chaos and delighted childish shrieking and running about in the fountains in the courtyard.
Notes for images(piccies to follow)
bigboard-- chess pieces as onlookers,audience to the random, chaotic movements of the human beings around the board.
child champions attracting an unusual and fawning level attention from media adults.
look at the clubs, social groups around chess
avi’s have good audio for posh simutaneous chess instructions
the handshake before the game
players stock still before they make their move then like a swipe or a maul to move the piece.
the little girl, had fingernails painted black and white. Her mother harrassed her with her anxiety while she tried to play, ”move now, yes now, once he’s played his move, you can move, .No not yet, yes now. If you’ve written it down you can move, well if you’ve written it down there’s no need to move just yet. Now, move now.” The girl took it all in her stride
one young man wrote a commentary of his regrets and insecurities, where he should have written his moves as he succumbed to Daniel King’s onslaught- should have had more coffee,etc, then a final cry of mercy to Steven, please be nice to me.
All the other ‘simultaneous’ players dutifully kept their play sheets. Records of their complex journeys in a simple structure.
THE ART(piccies to follow)
The 18 chess sets (five commissioned by contemporary artists) were arranged to map out Napoleans appocryphal last battle.
Jake and Dinos Chapman
sexualisation of the pieces through the genitalised, rectalised, bollokised faces of the young girls really highlights the agressive and animalistc energetics of chess. Also real characterisation of black and white opposition as racial. Afros and whitey bobs and flicks.
The skull and crossbone checkers of the board emphasize the forward motion of the players into each other’s territory. The knights are piggybacks.
Still need to map out the artistic and conceptual strategies employed by the artists
Changes to board
Georch Macunius (Fluxus)- each square becomes a container for colloured beads
Damien Hirst replaces the squares with a medical logo- you loose the grid and it becomes harder even than before to determine an advantageous move
Maurizio Cattelan gives each piece a celebrity identity - good versus evil, the kings are Hitler and Martin Luther King.
Yoko Ono’s game breaks down in a rather frustrating way. Seeming to imply that collaboration and cooperation really only exist in the realms of fantasy.
That a game without conflict cannot hold our attention or interest.
That a game without conflict CANNOT be DYNAMIC- we obviously need to live in a state of complexity which means between solidity and flux.
Considering that Yoko Ono’s is the only one that proposes an alternative to conflict it makes me wonder if collaborative games exist, if peace is nothing more than a fantasy.
Perhaps our current state vacillates too much between solidity and fluidity. the citizens of the USA live in a solid, consuming, secure state whilst the poor embattled 3rd world is in too much flux. Maintaining difference for dynamism’s sake.
topics
why women don’t play chess ?
complexity- emergence from simple rules/conditions/movements
why finding the right question is so hard- to hold the attention of the strategic mind the smugness of the expert develops with status, reputation, a masculine power, a mythos the eroticism of chess- female attraction to the mechanistic killer
1. pg373, The User Illusion by Tor Norretranders, published by Penguin 1999
2. pg374, ibid
3) Duchamp’s derrogatory assesment of Man Ray’s abilities as a chess player. (the art of Chess catalogue)
4) British Chess Magazine online (last edited :Friday June 27th 2003 12:11)
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