AR-201 Fall 2023: Week 11 Research Assignment

For the Week 11 research assignment, I chose Andrew Cole as my subject. Andrew Cole is an artist of British descent, living and working in Shanghai. He has previously lived in Oman, Thailand, and South Africa. Although Andrew Cole works with digital media, he is primarily a painter. His work has been shown and collected in Europe, Africa, and Asia. Andrew Cole uses Corel Draw for most of his digital work. Andrew Cole is also a MOCA grandmaster. The images shown in MOCA are different snapshots of complete chess games, including the addition of time within the image. Andrew has chosen chess as the structural basis for his artwork. He looks at these two-dimensional human constructions as a toolbox to create different structures and particle interactions. He hopes that someone else can use this toolbox to make something else interesting as well as his work and for it to be in their vision. The art piece I chose to show Andrew's work is called "Minority Report." The different small objects in the image represent other pieces on a chessboard. The spiky piece on the left side of the image is what I assume to be the knight, and the piece next to the supposed knight is what I think to be the queen piece as its trail travels vertically, horizontally, and diagonally. I believe the piece in the middle represents a bishop's piece because the trail following the piece only moves diagonally. Finally, I think the circle on the top left of the board represents the enemy king piece, which has been checkmated by the queen and the bishop. Showing underneath the art piece is how the game has ended in my eyes.