Beschreibung
Chess Piece is dedicated to my very good friends Ethan and Harold
who together, but at different points in my life have taught me the simple, yet highly complex,
centuries old, yet relevant game of chess. Harold told me once, “A lot of people
say that the game of chess is a metaphor for life, but to me
it’s just a game.” With this I set out to bring the game of
chess to a sonic reality.
The performance space is on a 24’ x 24’ square on the floor
outlined in black tape. The pitches designated in the
schematics will be placed inside of each square using a
fabric adhesive strip.
The 32 performers in the ensemble will represent all of the
pieces on the life‐size chessboard (16 white, 16 black). Via a
projector and two live chess players, the players in the
ensemble will immediately replicate a game of chess. As the
game plays out, the players will move through a series of
instructions for certain situation e.g. if a piece is captured
then the player must stop playing and leave the board.
In many ways, this work a compositional process in it’s raw form. The performance then becomes the development of this process which is completely at the whim of agame of chess.