Friday, May 29, 2015

CDoupbles :: sWING and sWAY

 THE WINGS from sWINGing and THE WAY from sWAYing.




I love logic and combinatorics. And I am more keen on the analysing the puzzle solving with logic and stratagem than using random-move methods, rather process and detail orientated than winning orientated. And Sudoku is a logic-based, combinatorial number-placement puzzle. The objective is to fill a 9×9 grid with digits so that each column, each row, and each of the nine 3×3 sub-grids that compose the grid contains all of the digits from 1 to 9. The puzzle setter provides a partially completed grid, which for a well-posed puzzle has a unique solution. I do the difficult ones. With the last one, I reached a point that I had two optional locations for considerable amount of numbers but not their precise whereabouts and couldn't move further. My logic was holding me to continue as it was not able to provide me with concrete answers. But I wanted to continue. So I just followed the multiple logic paths at random. „and it went on about how the quality of randomness, spontaneity, surprise, unexpectedness and irrationality in our lives is a very precious thing. And if you suppress that to have a nice orderly life, you kill off what's most important.“ Simon Jeffes, Penguin Cafe Orchestra. I finished it very quickly. For someone like me, conscious of rules and logic, was really a CHAlleNGING experience. sWINGing and sWAYing with my little magnetic numbers on my 9x9 grid with 3x3 sub-grids was so relieving. It felt like there is somebody else inside of me doing it, someone who knew what s/he is doing. I wished I could do things like this in real life.




Veronika Tzekova, CDoupbles, 2013- ongoing

Wednesday, May 20, 2015

CHAlleNGED GAMES @ Designmonat Graz 2015 #2 :: iGRAZ, uGRAZ...weGRAZ...

iGraz1
Publik, Re-publik. Raum, Traum. Square.


Flash mob on Tummelplatz, Graz

14th May, Thursday, 17:21h

Concept and props by Veronika Tzekova

games are a special form of liberating education, since they heighten awareness of the fact that formal systems are based on changeable axioms and that conceptual operations have a game-like nature.”
Ivan Ilich

The Tummelplatz2 in Graz was newly designed through its usage. The place was appropriated and turned into a big game-field for the simplest strategy game Tic-tac-toe (German: Drei gewinnt). The props for the appropriation were the people playing and the Street Tic-tac-toe, an author's game-sets, designed to be played on tiles covered surfaces using the grid, which they create.



iGraz it is not particularly about games and playing. It offers a different frame of reference and questions modes of behaviour in public space, notions of safety, sharing and freedom in public space. It is about rethinking public space and our role, attitude and relation to it and from here to all agencies involved in its construction, government and policies. Games are perceived as leisure activities and please do not be mislead by this. Here the game and its game board/grid are employed as metaphor for life and representation of systems, society and its members.

Tic-tac-toe is generally perceived as the simplest strategy game. A strategy game is a game in which the players' uncoerced, and often autonomous decision-making skills have a high significance in determining the outcome. Almost all strategy games require internal decision tree style thinking, and typically very high situational awareness.

Tummelplatz offers opulence of visually well defined grids and I see it as constellation of multiple game fields waiting to be populated. iGRAZ aims to turn physical public space from nature morte to nature vivant. The game set I use becomes a simple and universal space rethinking and reuse tool. It challenges to change all.

It took its natural course and people played as long as they wanted. It was small, beautiful and international.

1„igra“ in most of the Slavic languages means “game”. The “i” before “Graz” also borrows the meaning where 'i' stands for "individuality" and "innovation".

2Interesting coincidence is that Google translates “der Tummelplatz” as “the playground”




Tuesday, May 19, 2015

CHAlleNGED GAMES @ Designmonat Graz 2015 #1

CoasteredTic-tac-toe and PuzzledTic-tac-toe were shuffled!

And a beautiful mistake showed me that CHALLENGE, apart of CHANGE contains also ALL and  ALLE (ALL in German).

@

GAME CHalleNGE with veroniKATZE  


Designmonat Graz 2015/ Design in the City
May 13 | 4:00 pm
Mau Shi fusion restaurant (Herrengasse 7, 8010 Graz)
















Sunday, May 17, 2015

iGRAZ: Game Epiphanies :: Is knowing how to play the game = keeping to the game rules?


The Small Newspaper (Die Kleine Zeitung) and its language crash-kurs raised a BIG philosophical and practical question: 

Is knowing how to play the game = keeping to the game rules?

Morning coffee, morning Kleine Zeitung, where Du musst dich auch an die Spielregeln halten= You must learn to play the game. I would rather translate it as: You have to keep to the rules of the game. But may be in German speaking realm these two mean the same?...

Saturday, May 9, 2015

@ Games & Playing @ Literature #5 :: Ovid on Tic tac toe :: ludendo saepe paratur amor

P. OVIDI NASONIS LIBER TERTIVS ARTIS AMATORIAE


„Parva monere pudet, talorum dicere iactus
Ut sciat, et vires, tessera missa, tuas:
Et modo tres iactet numeros, modo cogitet, apte
Quam subeat partem callida, quamque vocet.
Cautaque non stulte latronum proelia ludat,
Unus cum gemino calculus hoste perit,
Bellatorque sua prensus sine compare bellat,
Aemulus et coeptum saepe recurrit iter. 360
Reticuloque pilae leves fundantur aperto,
Nec, nisi quam tolles, ulla movenda pila est.
Est genus, in totidem tenui ratione redactum
Scriptula, quot menses lubricus annus habet:
Parva tabella capit ternos utrimque
lapillos, 365
In qua vicisse est continuasse suos.
Mille facesse iocos; turpe est nescire puellam
Ludere: ludendo saepe paratur amor.
Sed minimus labor est sapienter iactibus uti:
Maius opus mores composuisse suos.

Ovid: The Art of Love
(Ars Amatoria)
Book III

„A few things shameful to mention, she must know how to call
the throws at knucklebones, and your values, you rolled dice:
sometimes throwing three, sometimes thinking, closely,
how to advance craftily, how to challenge.
She should play the chess match warily not rashly,
where one piece can be lost to two opponents,
and a warrior wars without his companion who’s been taken,
and a rival often has to retrace the journey he began.
Light spills should be poured from the open bag,
nor should a spill be disturbed unless she can raise it.
There’s a kind of game, the board squared-off by as many lines,
with precise calculation, as the fleeting year has months:
a smaller board presents three stones each on either side
where the winner will have made his line up together.
There’s a thousand games to be had: it’s shameful for a girl
not to know how to play: playing often brings on love.
But there’s not much labour in knowing all the moves:

there’s much more work in keeping to your rules.“



Friday, May 8, 2015

CDoupbles :: GOD and ODD in GOOD


Veronika Tzekova, CDoupbles, 2013- ongoing


Words faded, merged and (re)appeared while looking at a refugee telling his story how he made it to EU @ Europatagsveranstaltung 2015 "Europa - ein Plädoyer für die Gemeinschaft".



Monday, May 4, 2015

CDoupbles :: NATOD :: a found one


I found it, it is not mine and I envy a bit but still happy to have seen it. However it was fabricated, on purpose or not,  it is simple and forcing into contemplation CDoupble

* NATO- North Atlantic Treaty Organization

   Tod (German)- death




Friday, May 1, 2015

The Coastered Tic-tac-toe is now displayed in its natural environment



The playable table accessory will be at Mau Shi restaurant (Herrengasse 7 | Altstadtpassage in Graz, www.facebook.com/maushi) as part of the Design in the City program part of Designmonat Graz (1 May-31 May 2015). Coasters are typical and simple attribute for public venues such cafes, bars and pubs. The tic-tac-toe (“X”s and “O”s) is one of the simplest and spontaneously playable table strategy game. The author’s game Coastered Tic-tac-toe brings these two together offering playful CHAlleNGE while enjoying one’s drink. The game attributes are double sided printed with “X”s and “O”s regular coasters. These are to be used both for playing and as coasters. The wooden container box defines the 3x3 game board.