EN PASSANT

A Chess Chair I.

Hand carved and finished in Lapis lazuli.

by Jason Koharik, 2020.

This chair is evoked by a pawn. A piece in a war it was taught was just a game.

Almost nothing looks more orderly than chess pieces before a match starts. The first move, however, begins a spiral into chaos. After both players move, 400 possible board setups exist. After the second pair of turns, there are 197,742 possible games, and after three moves, 121 million. At every turn, players chart a progressively more distinctive path, and each game evolves into one that has probably never been played before.

According to Jonathan Schaeffer, a computer scientist at the University of Alberta who demonstrates A.I. using games, "The possible number of chess games is so huge that no one will invest the effort to calculate the exact number.

There are only 10^15 power total hairs on ALL the human heads in the world, 10^23 power grains of sand on Earth, and about 10^81 power atoms in the universe. The number of typical chess games is many times as great as all those numbers multiplied together—an impressive feat for 32 wooden pieces lined up on a board.”

That said, the Pawn is the only piece that has the opportunity to end the game on the first move.

Just think how fast the game would end if the pawns just turned around.

#aboutface

Price $2250

Size

29”w x 31”h x 31”d x 16”sh