Play Chess Against the Ghost of Marcel Duchamp: A Free Online Chess Game

Ear­li­er this year, Col­in Mar­shall told you how “Chess has obsessed many of humanity’s finest minds over cen­turies and cen­turies and Mar­cel Duchamp seems to have shown lit­tle resis­tance to its intel­lec­tu­al and aes­thet­ic pull.” His pas­sion for the game (which he describes above) led him to design a now icon­ic Art Deco chess set, to print an array of chess tour­na­ment posters, and to become a pret­ty adept chess play­er him­self, even­tu­al­ly earn­ing the title of “grand mas­ter” as a result. In a pret­ty neat project, Scott Kil­dall has looked back at records of Ducham­p’s chess match­es and cre­at­ed a com­put­er pro­gram that lets you play against a “Duchampian ghost.” Just click here, and then click on the chess piece you want to move. It will turn green, and then you can move it with your trackpad/mouse. Enjoy.

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Relat­ed Con­tent:

A Free 700-Page Chess Man­u­al Explains 1,000 Chess Tac­tics in Plain Eng­lish

Clay­ma­tion Film Recre­ates His­toric Chess Match Immor­tal­ized in Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey

A Human Chess Match Gets Played in Leningrad, 1924

Man Ray Designs a Supreme­ly Ele­gant, Geo­met­ric Chess Set in 1920 (and It’s Now Re-Issued for the Rest of Us)

Play Chess Against the Ghost of Mar­cel Duchamp: A Free Online Chess Game

Watch Bill Gates Lose a Chess Match in 79 Sec­onds to the New World Chess Cham­pi­on Mag­nus Carlsen


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Comments (4)
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  • Andy says:

    While I love the idea, the imple­ment­ed chess pro­gram is sim­ply under-par. It’s so bug-rid­den that you can not play a com­plete nor­mal game with it. When you play black, the pro­gram still requires you to go first! Total­ly dis­ap­point­ed!

  • NikFromNYC says:

    We’re all play­ing chess against Ducham­p’s ghost after he was used as pawn to under­mine West­ern aes­thet­ics for over a cen­tu­ry.

  • Mark Andresen says:

    Non­sense. He was no pawn. And West­ern aes­thet­ics was already a corpse by the begin­ning of the 20th cen­tu­ry any­way.

  • Kinton says:

    Duchamp helped Beck­ett fig­ure out the great chess game played and record­ed in the lat­ter’s nov­el Mur­phy.

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