Irresponsible Mediums
The Chess Games of Marcel Duchamp
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.
AARON TUCKER was born and raised on traditional Syilx territory in Lavington B.C. and now lives in Toronto as a guest on the Dish With One Spoon Territory. His novel, Y, was translated into French as Oppenheimer in 2020. He is also the author of multiple poetry collections, including Irresponsible Mediums: The Chess Games of Marcel Duchamp. 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 2020 recipient of the Joseph-Armand Bombardier Doctoral Scholarship.
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