Remember the heartbreak when Garry Kasparov lost his epic man-versus-machine battle against the Big Blue supercomputer?
A back-and-forth game of strategy, foresight, indirection, and creativity had been reduced to an algorithm. It wasn't so much man that lost that match as the game of chess itself.
No such worries with the world's other great game of mano-a-mano pure intellect, Layer Tennis. Computer programs can generate beautiful imagery, but they cannot play this game. No way, no how.
It isn't enough merely to take your opponent's previous play, clone and manipulate some visual elements, add something new, and put it together in a visually pleasing way. It has to mean something. The visual aesthetic, yes, that comes first -- a shot that doesn't look good is going nowhere. But that's the baseline. That's just treading water.
A good shot succeeds not just visually but conceptually. You suss out the meaning of your opponent's incoming shot and subvert it or twist it or mock it. And you have to think ahead, too, and express your own idea in such way that makes it difficult for your opponent to subvert/twist/mock in response.
Layer Tennis, in short, is a game played on, well, two levels.
Both players in this match understand this. In week one back in September, Inman dug himself a deep hole in the early rounds of his match against designer-illustrator-suspected-felon Kevin Cornell. But he came roaring back in the second half, his comeback effort falling just short. Note in particular volleys 6 and 8 by Inman, two of the best plays of this entire Layer Tennis season.
Three weeks later, Glass came out strong and never let up in his photography-heavy week four match against Naz Hamid. His first two shots, volleys 2 and 4, set the tone for the match and painted Hamid into a conceptual corner he never got out of.
Both players published insightful postmortem analyses regarding their previous matches (links: Inman, Glass), laying clear the twisted multi-level thinking that drives the game. But this week's simultaneous match format takes the meta game to a new level. Inman and Glass are playing a one-on-one match against each other, but if either can manage to work in elements from the Koxvold-Hutchinson match on the other court... well, that's just the sort of razzmatazz that drives the crowd -- and perhaps the judges -- wild.
Shaun Inman is a designer and programmer in Chattanooga, Tennessee. His web stats app, Mint, is both exquisitely clever and exceedingly popular. It's like crack for bloggers. His personal web site and weblog is shauninman.com, which Inman redesigns -- splendidly each time -- on a seemingly weekly basis.
Chris Glass hails from southwestern Ohio, the only state in the union that is round on the edges and "hi" in the middle. He's also a part of the crew at Wire & Twine, purveyors of exquisitely clever t-shirts and industrial-grade toilet paper holders. (Not a joke.) He takes photos and writes a splendid web site at chrisglass.com.
John Gruber publishes Daring Fireball, an intelligent and opinionated journal devoted to geeky things like operating system interfaces and just about anything that has to do with Apple. John has the ability to make complicated things simple and the enthusiasm to cut through the noise and get at what's what.
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The votes were counted and recounted. Every hanging chad was examined. In both Semi-Finals the winner prevailed by a very slight margin. The Finals are now set for Friday, July 10 at 2pm Chicago time. Lots more about the match and our expanded coverage soon.
Winners will be decided by your votes and will advance to the Finals on July 10th. To vote for a player simply post a Twitter message that includes #LYT and your favorite's name with the "hash" sign in front of it. Use These: #LYT plus #mrdraplin or #mrhubacek for the early match. #LYT plus #mrinman or #mrhansen for the late match. Voting is closed, winner announced later today.
Layer 10 is up. And that's a wrap for our second semi-final match.
The Ref's coin-flips and also his preview of today's first live Semi-Final featuring Aaron Draplin versus Greg Hubacek have been posted. Shaun Inman plays Scott Hansen in the nightcap and Jim Coudal's preview for that match is live too.
Find links to all the matches played previously and check on matches to come here.
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