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War in Chess
War in Chess
When the game meets war
The project War in Chess is a chess game between a human player and a chess program. The project took place in real-time on my personal website www.spyrosnakas.com at a rate of one move per day. The current position was displayed on the website and the chessboard was surrounded by eight words, which were linked to various war-related websites (articles, pictures, videos).
The game commenced on Monday, April 20th 2009, with Greek Champion, Grandmaster Christos Banikas, behind the white pieces, facing the strongest commercial chess engine, Rybka 3. Visitors could not only follow the progress of the game, but also actively participate in it by voting for Rybka's next move. Voting was effected by clicking on any of the eight words.
War in Chess projects the image of the chess game against the image of war, words being the connecting link between the two concepts.
A FEW WORDS ABOUT THE PROJECT
The game, in its broader sense, has to do with a strictly defined playing ground, governed by certain rules observed by both opposing sides. Respect for these rules and the playing ground gives rise, as a result, to a feeling of freedom of choice and movement. We may consider War as the negative projection of these properties of the game.
One of the most significant aspects of modern wars is the indeterminacy of beginning and end (Iraq, Palestine, Afghanistan), thus cutting once and for all the knot that symbolically tied war to the game.
According to Rancière, "...the heterogeneous elements are put together in order to cause collision". This collision produces spark, but at the same time also underlines that "...the heterogeneity of the elements resists the homogeneity of the meaning."
In this particular project, the chess game between the machine and the human player took place in an environment created by links related to war. These links led to material about various wars that were in progress or had concluded in the recent past.
This co-existence, within the art project, of the heterogeneous elements (game - modern war) on the one hand highlights their different aspects and, on the other, comments on the concepts of sociability and individuality.
Through this form of inviting the public to become part of the project, this heterogeneity was transformed, without loss of intensity, from a dialectical clash into an idiomorphic pattern, in which strange connections developed under the surface. The individual effort of a very strong chessplayer, the machine, but also the public that followed the progress of the chess game and participated in it, provoked a marginal and indiscernible disappearance of the limits between Game and War, as well as those between individual and public space.
— Spyros Nakas