chess

Rendered in realtime 3D and using fragmentation and particle effects, Stasssis explores the patterns and complexities of manipulative human behaviour. Click and drag with the mouse to circle around the scene - or swipe your touch screen. Use the mouse wheel - or pinch in/out - to zoom. A sound-toy, digital poem and interactive art installation, Stasssis features animated texts and slowly exploding chess pieces alongside a code-warped soundtrack by Barry Snaith.

ChessBard inputs the algebraic notation for a chess game in .PGN format (digital file format for archived chess games) and the Chessbard outputs a poem. The poems are based on 12 source poems Aaron wrote, 6 poems for the white pieces, 6 poems for the black pieces: there is a 64 word poem for each colour’s pawns, knights, rooks, bishop, queen and king. When a piece lands on a square it triggers a word from the source poems and the translator compiles them together and outputs a poem.

The piece is the short story of a digital chess game, a constellation which may be read conventionally from left to right, top to bottom - or in any other combination. Each of the 16 squares encodes an eight letter (byte) word, originally a file name from a computer chess game.