The A Game

On the occasion of my completion of the First Round of The A Game, I here begin a weblog charting its progress and vagueries. These images of the board and single pawn were taken during the Line of Thought exhibition held at Paintworks, Bristol (16/05/07...).

The board comprises sixty four separate tiles, each just shy of one foot square, on 3/4" fibreboard. Each was produced as an individual image and no two are the same, although motifs are echoed by more than one tile and there are several sets of tiles produced using similar techniques.


A list of materials and equipment:
MDF
Indian Ink
Quink
Mitsubishi "Eye" Pens
Corretion Fluid
PVA
Polyfilla
Acrylic
Acrylic-based Varnish
White Emulsion
Solvent-based Gold and Silver Inks
Gesso
Porcelain
Pastel
Graphite
Grass-stains
Salt
Wax
Iron Wire
Thread
Transfer Type
Printed Map
Blowtorch
Spot-welder
Firelighting Gel
Scalpel
Axe


The pawn was made by hand from porcelain and then fired and glazed. The Second Round of the game will involve making a full set of pieces from a variety of materials, including carved sea coal, brass and latex. I have begun my preliminary researches for the Second Round and hope to have completed the four Rooks by early 2008.



Some points of departure:

The Alphabet: The history of the Alphabet is one of abstraction and the evolution of graphic memes. Basic hieroglyphic forms which could double up as syllables in names or for use in words which had no hieroglyph were adapted by Egypt’s Semitic population for use with their own language. This altered body of signs was then eventually taken up by the Greeks, who further simplified and abstracted the images.

The original pictographic signs were worn smooth by countless hands, simplified by an endless process of Chinese whispers until they became abstract shapes. These 26 sigils were useful precisely because they are meaningless, empty signs that can be filled over and over again. With centuries of use, however, the letters of the alphabet have gained faint meaning again, not least because of the development of alphabet books for to help children memorise the letters (A is for Apple and so on).



Chess: The evolution of the abstract chess piece follows a similar course to the alphabet, travelling hundreds of miles between people who only half understood one another. The original Indian forms were themselves the result of centuries of development, a set of complex miniature sculptures rich with symbolic detail. When chess was taken up by the Arabic world, their religious prohibition of representational images meant that new pieces were made, retaining only the rough silhouettes of the Indian originals for recognition.

From the Middle East, these abstract pieces were taken all over Europe, and gradually over the following centuries marking and then full relief was added to the pieces in the tradition of Mediæval European carving. During this period, older abstract sets in precious materials remained in play, and many cheaper sets were made for use by the general public. These sets, often of ceramics or turned wood, were a mixture of abstract forms and representational elements because of the cost of carving.

The abstraction and then loss of the original representational forms was a critical development, however, because it allowed a pluralism of ideas about the form and meaning of the pieces. Across Europe, pieces were made differently. This meant that during the Renaissance, new abstract forms for the pieces could be invented. Many such forms were inspired by the wood turning process. These were combined with representational crowns for each piece to aid in identification.




Games: There is a certain kind of looking that only comes when one is deep in a game. Attention is enhanced, narrowed. Schooled to certain stimuli, the mind overlays an invisible lacework of potential correspondences onto the eye. Relentlessly, the eye attempts to bore into the surfaces of things, only to glance off them, restlessly flitting from one knot to another and back. Looking, looking. All the while feeling the threads linking the knots, feeling the tremor of a movement in the web, feeling the fine lines like a hair under the eyelid, feeling that maddening itch of something on the edge of perception.

It is as though I am playing a game of chess inside myself. I can feel the subtle power of making a move, but I have not yet found how to make a board and pieces outside myself to share the game with other people. (Sometimes a calligraphic line can mirror part of the game for the instant after I draw it.) Any object can become a pawn, any word. Each square on the board contains another board. Each move is like a song.

A different game is being played out in the world, as unlike to my game as death is to life. The A Game. In this game I am less than a pawn. Lead moves into flesh. Money changes hands.