Irresponsible Mediums: The Chess Games of Marcel Duchamp

by Aaron Tucker

In 1968, avant-garde artist Marcel Duchamp and composer John Cage exhibited Reunion, a chess performance, in Toronto Canada where whenever a player moved a piece, it generated a musical note until the game was transformed into a symphony.

Inspired by this performance, Irresponsible Mediums--poet and academic Aaron Tucker's second full-length collection of poems--translates Duchamp's chess games into poems using the ChessBard (an app co-created by Tucker and Jody Miller) and in the process, recreates Duchamp's joyous approach to making art, while also generating startling computer-made poems that blend the analog and digital in strange and surprising combinations.

With an introduction by Jennifer Shahade, two time U.S. Women's Chess Champion.

Praise for Irresponsible Mediums :

"Marcel Duchamp's chess games played between 1922-1961 come alive with the Chessbard's translation of those games into poetry. This wonderful book by Aaron Tucker of (close to) 100 Opening, Middle, and End game moves generated from source poems by the author is a must read for Duchamp scholars, Digital Humanists, video game theorists, and chess fans. The poetry, along with the introduction by Jennifer Shahade, chess professional and co-author of Marcel The Art of Chess , sets the context for the art and performative aspect of game play." --Dene Grigar, Professor, Creative Media & Digital Culture; President, Electronic Literature Organization

"As Marcel Duchamp observed, "Beauty in chess is closer to beauty in poetry." The opposite is also often true. These poems are beautiful gambits that, like the best chess games, delight and intrigue with their elegant and intelligent play." --Gary Barwin, Winner of the Leacock Medal, and finalist for the Scotiabank Giller Prize, and Governor General's Literary Award for Yiddish for Pirates

Genres: Poetry

120 pages, Paperback

First published October 5, 2017

About the author

Aaron Tucker is the author of the forthcoming novel Soldiers, Hunters, Not Cowboys with Coach House Books on June 6th, 2023. His essay “A Cowboy’s Work” was longlisted for the 2022 CBC Non-Fiction Prize and is part of a work-in-progress collection of essays.

Tucker’s latest poetry collection is Catalogue d’oiseaux (Book*hug Press, Spring 2021). His novel Y: Oppenheimer, Horseman of Los Alamos (Coach House Books) was translated by Rachel Martinez into French as Oppenheimer (La Peuplade) in the summer of 2020. In addition, he is the author of two books of poetry, Irresponsible Mediums: The Chess Games of Marcel Duchamp (Bookthug Press) and punchlines (Mansfield Press), and two scholarly cinema studies monographs, Virtual Weaponry: The Militarized Internet in Hollywood War Films and Interfacing with the Internet in Popular Cinema (both published by Palgrave Macmillan).

He is currently a PhD candidate in the Cinema and Media Studies Department at York University where he is an Elia Scholar, a VISTA doctoral Scholar and a 2020 Joseph-Armand Bombardier doctoral fellow. He is currently studying the cinema of facial recognition software and its impacts on citizenship, mobility and crisis.

He was born in Vernon B.C. and grew up in Lavington B.C., on the lands of the Syilx Okanagan Nation. Currently, he is a guest on the Dish with One Spoon Territory.

Reviews

[Frank Begbie · Rating 3 out of 5]

I am happy to share that I have finally slain the medium chess robot on my chess application. Do not jump out of your seats with joy, however. The medium difficulty is only the fourth option out of 10 robot difficulties. It took a lot of rolling boulders up hills and one cheeky take-back mid game to slay the medium robot so it will be years of mastering the art of war before I reach the top of the hill that is my Chess app. 3 stars for inconsistent plays from the robot im not very impressed