Check mate IRL! Check mate online! A few words on the digital and playing (chess)

Abstract

Chess is one of the oldest and most well-known games in history. In our recent times there is even something like a “chess turn’, according to the spread of chess playing has become; also as a motif in film, TV, etc. is in line with this tendency. A few reasons for this are likely to be seen in: the pandemic, the TV series The Queen’s Gambit, and the digitization of everyday life the latest three/four decades.

This will be a presentation about the sensorial differences between playing chess IRL (In Real Life) and online. Some examples will be put forward here, in the digitization of the chess discourse. First of all: the fact that many chess games today are being played online (on platforms like chess.com, lichess, and more). Second, the chess computer as an invention. Three, influencers, and live streaming of chess tournaments. Differences in sensing, feeling and experiencing the playing of chess online vs IRL will be discussed in some different aspects, especially: touching, seeing, and hearing. Theoretically, I will draw mostly upon Elleströms concepts of media, and the material and sensorial modalities. I will also make use of reflections on digital intermedialities put forward in Bruhn/Schirrmacher (2022), and chess literature.

As a background, one can see that chess is in focus in my ongoing research project, entitled Chess as/in Culture (-s), in which chess is discussed as a culture (chess clubs, chess theory, the rating system, the star system, the medialities of chess, the digitization of the game, chess in the urban space, and more), but also as being represented in different media and art forms, including popular culture expressions (film, TV-series, graphic novels, musicals, music videos, fiction, poetry, drama). Central parts in this project deals with the digitized forms of playing chess.