This was a collaborative project focused on reinterpreting a classic game with a whole new narrative
Research
For my partner and I, this research began with learning the basic rules of chess since neither of us have ever learned to play. We did this by looking up the moves each piece is allowed to make, and by actually playing to try to understand the goal and strategies of the game. We learned using a chess app instead of an actual set which was part of the inspiration behind our concept. We also dove into the rich history of chess including its place of origin, the strong male dominance associated with the game, and more about the development of the well known medieval theme. My partner and I tried to master strategies and quickly realized that both of us struggled with completing a successful game. We ended in a draw almost every time we played meaning neither of us really knew ways to check our opponent. Because we discovered the game wasn’t one we particularly enjoyed and maybe that would change had we gotten better at the game) we decided to focus more on the concept behind chess becoming a digital game and whether or not that affects the tradition behind it.
Exercises
Slit Joint Practice
To practice the main joint used to assist the pieces in standing, we did a partner exercise using bristol. One person created the front plane while the other created the side plane and then we joined the two by cutting slits in them. This was an important exploration because we talked about seeing double of a part of an object that you normally wouldn’t (like the wings on the butterfly we made), and also about tolerances of material and how that can affect the stability of our pieces.
Concept Statement
Oftentimes, our world is so digitized that it can mask the beauty in the tradition of things. We can get so enthralled by the convenience and ease of doing things online, that we lose sight of the wonder in the way they were originally meant to be done. Chess is a wonderful example of this. With online chess being widely accessible and much easier to play, do we possibly lose some of what makes the game so interesting? Our concept is to create a commentary on the digital world and the role it plays on traditional and historical aspects of life. Our chess pieces appear to be pixelated/digitized but are able to be transformed, via a hinge, to an ornate/traditional chess piece. We are using painted matboard and jump rings, rasterizing our design through the paint so that the color of the matboard is visible underneath. One side is black mat board painted white, with black showing through the rastered design. The other side is white mat board painted black, with white showing through the rastered design. Each piece consists of two mat board cutouts, featuring a pixelated chess piece on one side and a traditional chess piece on the other side of each cutout. One of each cutout is longer, where a perpendicular strip of a matboard is placed via a slit joint. They are connected at the top, by two jump rings and can be flipped back and forth. In one position, each piece has a traditional chess piece on both sides and in the other position, has a digitized chess piece on both sides. Essentially, the image of the traditional piece is hidden when the digitized version is shown, and vice versa.
Iterations
Our concept required us to create a digital version and a traditional version. We chose to represent the digital with a pixelated form of each piece and the traditional in a classic shape with shading via rasterizing. Since we wanted each version to completely hide the opposite of itself, we played around with several mechanisms to do so. Our first concept was to have a removable box revealing the piece underneath but this was impractical to the function of the game because you’d have a bunch of random pieces lying around. To solve this problem, we discussed and drew up a variety of flipping techniques and ended up going with the jump rings. We also discovered at this stage that we needed to contain the picture of the actual piece within a larger surrounding shape so that we were able to rasterize perfectly even on either side by flipping the symmetrical shape. We tested the material we would be using to account for the tolerance of the slit which took some trial and error. In order to achieve the opposite color after rasterizing the matboard, we painted the originally white board black and the originally black board white. This way the core was different that the outer layer. Our first rastering test produced the pieces too large so we resized and started over. The hardest part was keeping everything in the exact same place so the cut and the rasterizing were in the correct location on the correct side of each piece.
Final
This project turned out to be a difficult one to complete based on issues we ran into and just overall timing however, it was a great reminder of perseverance and how we could alter the original design in order to get it done. I think that our set looks really clean and I like the contrast we created by painting prior to rasterizing. The concept could maybe be made a bit more clear as I’m not sure everyone knew right away that the pieces were able to be flipped. But overall I am really happy with the results and I appreciate how my partner and I collaborated to complete this project.
View the final project at Checkmate: Final