Gary Barwin – “a minimalist variational elegance”

The beautiful elegance of chess is that there are a set of rules which enable a dance of creative permutation.

 1.e4 c5 2.c3 d5 3.exd5 Qxd5 e4 c5 2.c3 d5 3.exd5 Qxd5 e4 c5 2.c3 d5 3.exd5 Qxd5 e4 c5 2.c3 d5 3.exd5 Qxd5 e4 c5 2.c3 d5 3.exd5 Qxd5 e4 c5 2.c3 d5 3.exd5 Qxd5 e4 c5 2.c3 d5 3.exd5 Qxd5 e4 c5 2.c3 d5 3.exd5 Qxd5 e4 c5 2.c3 d5 3.exd5 Qxd5 e4 c5 2.c3 d5 3.exd5 Qxd5 e4 c5 2.c3 d5 3.exd5 Qxd5 e4 c5 2.c3 d5 3.exd5 Qxd5 e4 c5 2.c3 d5 3.exd5 Qxd5 e4 c5 2.c3 d5 3.exd5 Qxd5 e4 c5 2.c3 d5 3.exd5 Qxd5 e4 c5 2.c3 d5 3.exd5 Qxd5 e4 c5 2.c3 d5 3.exd5 Qxd5 e4 c5 2.c3 d5 3.exd5 Qxd5 e4 c5 2.c3 d5 3.exd5 Qxd5 e4 c5 2.c3 d5 3.exd5 Qxd5

There is a minimalist variational elegance in the shapes of the pieces. In the simple binary pairs of white/black, light/shadow, win/lose. In the alternating turns. In the endless ontological or metaphysical narrative variation of beginning/ending. Life/death. In the relation of the pieces to the real world (castle, rook, knight, bishop, queen.) To dance, war, strategic intrigue, molecules, literature, music. A two-tone slow-motion soccer of the mind. How much is chess in the physical world and how much of it is in the imagination? Its richly unfolding patterns of play. The universe of chess unfolds on the universe/page/world/map/dimensionality of the chessboard.

When I think of chess, I can’t help thinking of Marcel Duchamp, Machiavelli, Heisenberg, Wittgenstein. Sherlock Holmes. Lao Tzu.

And poetry.

My immediate impulse when presented with a set of rules, behaviours, or choices, or possibilities is is to play with them. To test their limits. To take them on the road and see what happens. To subvert them. To game them. There is a logic or unfolding narrative implicit in chess. What happens when you play with that for artistic purposes? If you have a musical scale, the impulse is to try it out, to twist and turn, to repeat, to double back, to use it in novel ways, to refer to the past and to surprise.

So, too, with the Chessbard translator.

And repetition is a powerful tool. Repeat. Repetition is a powerful tool. A powerful powerful tool. It is. Walk from point A to point B, but repeat a few steps on the way: a dance.

Repeating causal relations or grammar gives rise to a surprising freshness, poetry, dance, music. It confounds the inherent causal logic.

Which is why my first impulse was to repeat moves out of context. Art (poetry) is all about taking things out of context. Reframing. Unpacking. Start from the middle. Begin at the ending. Die, then live. Rinse. Lather. Retreat. If the goal is to win, then act the quantum trickster, the savant idiot, the computer program that was written by a holy fool, the translator that fills hovercraft with eels.

Chess is always a kind of translation and the opposite is also true. Nature is a kind of chess, translation, or poetry.  As is the mind. Both of them.

There is a chess game where all the pieces are letters. Each has a specifically defined pattern of movement. The game is between two players. Points are scored each time meaning is made – when the pieces align and can be read as fragments, or words. A scoring system is established. Two monkeys playing this game a hundred times could come up with Shakespeare or at least, Marlowe. The game is a broken narrative, a lexicon, a poem. The players need special hats, pre-determined footwear, a place to play in the park. Maybe each player is a reader, and reads their own or the other player’s letters. Perhaps there is a designated reader sitting to the side of the board, sipping coffee, recording everything. Later, game transcripts are bound and offered to readers who could not attend. My son sat on top of the refrigerator when we were replacing it. We left the wine in the trunk of the car and it froze.