Weiqi, Metaphor, and Abstraction

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I especially enjoyed the Chen reading this week. Chen’s tracing of the ways in which weiqi served as a metaphor for war, society, and the cosmos seems reminiscent of last week’s readings, which told us that chess was treated in much the same manner. What’s interesting to me is that the metaphors built around chess…

Week 6 Weiqi, Liubo, and Boyi

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This week’s reading were by far the most difficult we have had to read thus far. Wei Yao’s Disquisition on Boyi was the most difficult for me to understand however that was most likely because it, like all of the other reading, was talking about a culture that I haven’t ever really understood and the…

Abstraction or Symbolism

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The game of Weiqi looked to be, from a play, culture and place in society point of view, a very similar game to chess. They are both games that take great skill and their players are prized for their intellect and abilities. They both had a high standing in courts and seats of power yet…

Weiqi Stones

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The aesthetic principle behind this photo, perhaps unintentionally, mirrors the function that Weiqi stones serve on their game board. Housed in larger lacquerware containers, they seem to be constructed to make the same noise they do when touching the finished boards with which they are played on. Art of Contest‘s section on Weiqi is interesting…

Weiqi and Creativity

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While I can’t say if I really enjoyed the reading this week it did bring up an interesting portion of games that is often overlooked, and definitely isn’t something we’ve really talked about in class, how games can be a powerful means of self expression. Though the creation of games is obviously an expressive action,…

Week 6 response

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I thought the reading were informative but rather difficult to understand. I guess because I do not view games the same ways as the authors of these articles do. Games, to me, are not aesthetically pleasing.. Yes the boards that weiqi is played on and the Chinese cards are beautiful. However, the meaning of beautiful, to…

Liubo image

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This image shows two immortals playing Liubo during the Han Dynasty. This image shows the spiritual aspect that liubo may have been inspired by. Perhaps being inspired by the cosmos it definately created spiritual artwork, an aspect of games that we have not realy looked into much yet.

Week 6

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In last weeks reading, there was an emphasis on religion in earlier centuries and the impact it has on games.The Catholic church was explicitaly against the game of chess until they were able to use it as a tool to teach and further instill the social hierarchy in people. In both of the Art of…