I hope you enjoyed the distribution set, & I hope you see the link between this project/game and the topic of the conference. We may be a long way off from understanding the role of mirror neurons in making judgments about other people’s perspectives… Certainly there’s as much spatial-position-processing involved in playing Abstract Chess as there is “action based inferences about the other.” But the distance from theory to knowledge makes fertile ground for speculation, don’t it?

Hope you weren’t too creeped out by the deliveryman, and thanks for trusting a masked stranger!

The set you got is the last of the batch I printed for the Bizzarre Bazzar about 18 months ago, and the instructions have a sort-of-small-sort-of-a-big-deal typo…
The word ‘avoid’ is missing between the words ’should’ and ‘recognizable.’  The intent is probably clear… but maybe not.

I hope you enjoy the game, and the crayons, and thank you for the amazing (overwhelming) amount of art and story on display at the Expo!

If you found a leather briefcase with 30 or so capsules, containing crayons and cards and instruction sheets bearing this web address, you can redeem it all for 1$ per capsule and 20$ for the briefcase.  Maybe a meal, too, if there’s a good story about how you recovered the satchel from wherever the car thieves tossed it…

But can you tell which way it’s been turned?

According to the internet, Allied forces in World War I used cubist paintings to break up the silhouettes of warships.

Jim and Jamie Richter have the story at their website, along with many more photos. What you see above is an artist’s rendering, which I’ve cropped and spun around a little. They’ve got one shot of an actual vessel with the anti-pattern pattern. It would have been a sight to see… I supposed there’s room for a Battleship variant of Abstract Chess… Something with a cartesian plane, where moves are made by linear equations and html code?

1. Upload the power-point

2. Write instructions for assembling a set

3. Photo and upload more past games

4. Create separate flickr account?

5.  Distribute all of the “Arnow’s Flaw” sets

6. Make new sets

A few people may be finding their way here from the website of Pandora’s Trunk, a collective boutique and bazaar for the bizarre and beautiful. A few capsule sets were sold, and a few games were played, and it was a very pleasant time indeed. Also they were very nice about the fact that I was horrendously late.

And thanks to Rob for catching a few typos on the instruction sheets.  I guess since you found them, it’s your responsibility to fix them all, right Rob?  Right?

Post a pic of your game, ask a question about how to play, request another set of instructions or crayons…

And if you happened to catch any of the Spiegelman/Mouly panels on Saturday, and want to tell me about ‘em, please feel free, ’cause I sure wanted to catch ‘em, and I equally surely din’t.

Most of you were asleep, hung-over, or checking out the extremely neato hack-your-disposable-digital-camera presentation, so you missed my demo of this neat little game called abstract chess.

Abstract Chess is a fun game we used to play once upon a time in college, and it spread a little but never caught on the way werewolves did. I’ve been meaning to do up a nice presentation to introduce more people to it, and make some Abstract Chess sets as well, and BarCamp LA provided a viable deadline (and 3 person audience!)

You can jump ahead to the next post if you like–it’s got the whole text from the powerpoint, so all you need is an index card and some crayons… Or read on for a little more rambling and reflection.

Just to dispell any mis-notions, Abstract Chess is not a typical BarCamp theme thing. It’s not wired, it’s not java-tastic, it doesn’t narrowcast a MUD over WiMax, but you could use a soldering iron on it…

And it’s not very chess like, except for one superficial similarity (turns begin when you touch a piece and end when you let it go…) and a Chomskian deep structure analogy (if I may be permitted a truly sophomoric statement).

But Abstract Chess is kind of very Web 2.o; it’s super-duper participatory and democratic. Yep, I’ll stick with that.

It’s an art game for people with no art ability, and a competition game for people who like to collaborate but also like to be (or just see) a winner. And it’s a great way to use stolen office supplies.

Thanks to the Jeff and Jennifer and Ace (?) who played, and the handful who might have looked at one of the slides and thought they were pretty.

I’ve given up loading the PPT as a wordpress file for the moment…

But all the text is contained in the first post here (the rules), and all the images (sans cropping and rotation) are in the flickr stream.

As for the vast cultural potential of this little game we used to play at UCSD and has migrated to Vassar and Oakland and other parts, well, let’s not go overboard. It’s a fun game you won’t regret trying–I like how that looks so let’s leave it at that, agreed?

Abstract Chess is a game of collaborative, competitive art-making.

Play consists of two players sitting on opposite sides of a canvas (usually an index or recipe card) taking turns making abstract marks until they are both satisfied with the result.

The term “canvas” is intentionally vague. You can use a sheet of paper, a recipe card, a few square yards of burlap, a post-it…

A turn begins when you take a utensil (usually a marker or crayon) and make contact with the canvas. The turn ends when you break contact.

The term “utensil” is intentionally vague. You can use a pencil, a paintbrush, a fingernail, a power-drill…

Players may do as much or as little as they desire on a turn; but should only make abstract marks. You should avoid recognizable symbols, characters, or pictures.

It’s very important that the players do not turn the canvas during the game, or get up and look at it from a different perspective.

Throughout, each player will see the closest side of the canvas as “down” and the far side as “up” from their own perspective.

These perspectives are in direct conflict.

Only when both players are satisfied with what they see, and agree to be done, should they turn the canvas and see what their opponent has been seeing for the whole game.

Sometimes a winner is obvious… Mostly, the players should recruit a random set of people (whoever’s sitting nearby) to vote on the question:

“If you were going to hang this on a wall, which way would you hang it up?”

The Instruction Sheet