The project war in chess is a chess game between a human player and a chess program. The project will take place in real-time on my personal website www.spyrosnakas.com at a rate of one move per day. The current position will be displayed on the website and the chessboard will be surrounded by eight words, which are linked to various war-related websites (articles, pictures, videos).
The game will commence on Monday, April 20th 2009, with Greek Champion, Grandmaster Christos Banikas, behind the white pieces, facing the strongest commercial chess engine, Rybka 3. Visitors can not only follow the progress of the game, but also actively participate in it by voting for the Rybka's next move. Voting is 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.
The game, in its wider meaning, has to do with a strictly defined playing ground, that is governed by certain rules, observed by both opposing sides. Respect to 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 impalpability of beginning and end (Iraq, Palestine, Afghanistan), thus cutting once and for all the knot that symbolically tied war to the game.
According to Ranciere, "...the heterogenous elements are put together in order to cause collision". This collision produces spark, but at the same time also underlines that "...the heterogeny of the elements resists the homogeny of the meaning".
In this particular project, the chess game between the machine and the human player will take place in an environment created by links related to war. These links lead to material about various wars that are in progress or have concluded in the recent past.
This co-existence, within the art project, of the heterogenous 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 heterogeny is transformed, without loss of intensity, from a dialectical clash to an idiomorphic pattern, in which strange connections develop under the surface. The individual effort of a very strong chessplayer, the machine, but also the public that will be following the progress of the chess game and participate in it, provoke a marginal and indiscernible disappearance of the limits between Game and War, as well as those between individual and public space.