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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Tomorrow we continue our series of live, experimental Layer Tennis Exhibitions with a motion graphics match between Matt Smithson and Daniel Oeffinger. As usual, the action starts at 2pm Chicago time. Check the time in your area. What is unusual is that the match won't finish until next Thursday. We'll be posting two layers per weekday. We've always wondered what would happen if we gave a couple artists a lot more time to do each volley and this week we'll find out. Commentary is by Jason Koxvold, who knows a little something about LYT and mo-graf. Jason's Match Preview has been posted and so has the coin-flip.
Naz and Sam Peeling Back the Layers on last Friday's amazing photographic and musical live Layer Tennis Match. No Tennis this week by the way, we'll be back live on the 19th
Layer 10 is up. And that's a wrap! Big thanks to Sam, Naz, Mark, and all the fans. No voting this week, but be sure to sign up for Season Tickets and be the first to get match info and learn how to play in our qualifying matches. Layer Tennis is taking a week off, we'll see you back here on March 19th for our fourth exhibition match.
The coin-flip and Match Preview are up for today's live Photographic Exhibition Match. We're almost set to go. Tweet your comments and include #lyt and then follow the chatter on our Crowd Page. And if you don't have 'em already, sign up for Free Season Tickets for news, contests and maybe even a chance for you to take the court this season.
Find links to all the matches played previously and check on matches to come here.
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