Rethinking Wargames
Ruth Catlow & many chess players
www.furtherfield.org/rcatlow/r...
Currently featured as part of Free Play, a touring exhibition with Cory Arcangel, Mary Flanagan, Yoko Ono and David Shrigley. Curated by Melissa E. Feldman and organized by Independent Curators International (ICI).
Rethinking Wargames is a participatory net art project instigated by Ruth Catlow in 2003 as the allied forces were preparing for war in Iraq. She posted to chess forums, an image of the chess board reconfigured with pawns on one side and the higher pieces on the other, with the question…
"Under what conditions could the pawns in this game win?"
The website documents and illustrates the technical responses of chess pundits alongside more philosophical and political replies from amateur players. It illustrates alternative games with rules suggested by participants.
The Low-fi net art commission 2003 supported the creation of the new online multiplayer game of 3 Player Chess, in which pawns of both sides (played by a 3rd player) preserve peace by stopping any pieces from being captured. If the pawns succeed in blocking the aggression of the higher pieces, the checkerboard is progressively overgrown with grass and the black and white checks of the battleground disappear in the undergrowth.
Interview with Molly Hankwitz (2006) A Chance to Remaster Conflict
Many, many people contributed to this project but special credit is due to Marc Garrett and the Furtherfield Team (for ongoing inspiration and critique), Adrian Eaton (who programmed the new game), Carol Webb, Ivan Pope, Maf'J Alvarez, Henry Holland, Charles Cameron (for philosophical and ludic input) and the Low-fi crew for commissioning the online game.
Featured in exhibitions
2014-15, as part of Free Play, a touring exhibition with Cory Arcangel, Mary Flanagan, Yoko Ono and David Shrigley. Curated by Melissa E. Feldman and organized by Independent Curators International (ICI).
March 18 – April 20, 2014, Arcadia University Art Gallery, Glenside, PA. College of Wooster Art Museum in Wooster, Ohio on January 13 – March 6, 2015; Art Gallery of Greater Victoria in Victoria, BC, Canada from April 25, 2015 – August 3, 2015; Handwerker Gallery, Ithaca College in Ithaca, NY from October 1, 2015 – November 6, 2015; Museum London in London, ON, Canada from January 30, 2016 – May 8, 2016; The Rooms, Provincial Art Gallery Division in St. John's, NL, Canada from May 27, 2016 – August 28, 2016; Parsons' Sheila C. Johnson Design Center at The New School in New York City, NY with dates to be confirmed.
2005, RISK, CCA, Glasgow
2004, The Making of Balkan Wars- Personal Cinema, Athens/Madrid
2003, The Baltic, Gateshead and Limehouse Town Hall, London.
Featured in the following books
Upcoming: Richard Barbrook, Class Wargames- Ludic subversion against spectacular capitalism
Mary Flanagan, (2009) Critical Play, MIT Press.
Joline Blais and Jon Ippolito, (2009) At the Edge of Art, Thames and Hudson
2005, Artists Residency – RISK Media Lab, CCA, Glasgow
2005, Artist Residency and Conference – WarGames: Making and Unmaking the World, University of Maine, US