Site review - Chess art and culture

Is chess an art? Former world champion Tigran Petrosian didn't think
so. 'Chess does not belong to art, as it is devoid of the specific
trait of expression in art -- the assimilation of the world through
its interpretation by the means of art,' he wrote in his summary
of 'Chess Logic'. He may have ignored or overlooked that a game of
chess is a miniature war; others less skilled at the calculation of
chess moves have not.

The image of two persons engaged in intellectual combat on 64 squares
arranged 8 by 8 has fascinated and perplexed those who have not even
known 'how the horse moves'. This fascination has given us works of
art and literature which are just as much the domain of chess history
as are the lives, the competitions, and the games of the great chess
masters. The self-proclaimed 'first site of chess art and culture on
the Internet' is...

Chess art and culture
http://carmelo111.supereva.it/

... by Coco & Crispi, a bilingual (English & Italian) site. Although
it appears that the originators intend to translate the Italian
language pages into English, the bulk of the material is today in
Italian. If, like me, you're not comfortable reading Italian, you'll
need...

Google Language Tools
http://www.google.be/language_tools?hl=en

...to understand the material. The Coco & Crispi site uses an
invisible frame structure, which means that you'll need to give more
than the domain name to Google. This address...

Chess art and culture (index page)
http://carmelo111.supereva.it/index.htm

...works for site translation. You may also need to use the full
address if, after using the short address, you receive a blank page
as I did on several occasions.

While discussing technical anomalies, I should mention that the
Supereva.it host launches the most annoying popup window that I've
ever encountered. It won't close permanently or stay minimized. It
constantly interrupts other work and reappears when scrolling the
main browser window or when working in other programs, like Access.
It's a real nuisance. You can tame it by opening 'Properties' (right
click on one of the popup's elements), leaving the properties window
open, and consigning the popup to the background. It won't bother you
again.

---

The objectives of the site are described behind the two blue buttons
('Our project' in English -or- 'Il nostro progetto' in Italian) on
the index page -- 'The History of Chess' / 'La storia degli
scacchi'. 'The Project, we are going to develop, has mainly a
cultural aim and is based on the construction of a multilingual
archive to document and study all the artistic processes in relation
to the game of chess.' The project page goes on to enumerate and
explain 15 topics...

'Pictorial and sculptural works, Treatises/manuscripts, Archaeology,
Literature, Cinema, Philately, Historical Personages, Historical
Researches, Psychology, Historical Studies, Collecting, Reviews,
Chess short stories, Computer graphics, and Miscellany.'

...The page finishes with, 'We are deeply convinced that the Chess is
not only competitive sports but history, culture, art. -
Coco/Crispi'.

Back on the index page, you can open a separate page for each of
these topics by clicking the 'INDEX' button and then one of the
topics in the list. Make sure that the 'INDEX' button is not at the
top of your browser window, or you won't see the small topics panel
as it slides open.

Each of the topics leads to a list of essays, offered as both an
English language (under 'Index') and an Italian language
(under 'Indice') page. The lists of essays under each corresponding
pair of English and Italian pages are identical. For
example, 'Pictorial works' and 'Galleria d'arte' both link to the
same 18 essays. Where an essay exists only in English or only in
Italian, both Index and Indice point to the same essay. Where an
essay exists in both English and Italian, the Index and Indice point
to the appropriate version.

While preparing this review, I loaded the index data for the essays
into a database. I counted 119 essays (including one duplicate : the
Archaeology index links to both English and Italian versions
of 'Origin of Chess, Protochess, 400 B.C. to 400 A.D.') plus four
essays marked 'in preparation'. Coco's name is listed against 43
essays, Crispi's against 31. The essays are distributed by topic as
follows:-

Ct Topic
24 Stories
18 Art gallery
17 Historical studies
14 Literature
11 Miscellany
10 Archaeology
9 Collecting
5 Book reviews
5 Philately
3 Cinema
2 Computer graphic
1 Psychology

As you can see, the 'Stories' topic has the largest number of
articles. Two of these are legends about the invention of chess. The
first is the well known story about covering each square on the
chessboard with double the number of grains : 'One grain over the
first square, two grains over the second square, four grains over the
third...' The second is a story that appears to be written by Coco;
at least I had never heard it before : 'A very old legend handed down
by an old wise man, tells about the creation of the Universe and the
invention of the game of Chess.'

The other 22 are Italian language stories by Crispi. The first is
titled '24 Brumaio'. Unfortunately, the Google translation was not
much help here. It decided that the title was best left as '24
Brumaio' and then translated the first few sentences as 'Those
mattino exiting of house said to the moglie that it did not wait for
it to lunch, why had much to work. The Salut set offed directly
towards Place de. Sure Paraddosale that had been chosen a place of
such name in order to install the mannaia to you. In those years
every thing by now sovvertita'. Two-thirds through this gibberish,
the translation just stopped and the text continued in the original
Italian.

I repeated the translation using the babel.altavista.com service and
got an identical English text. It stopped a few words sooner than the
Google service, but at least informed me that '*** TRANSLATION ENDS
HERE ***'. It's obvious that both services use the same underlying
software, which is produced by Systran.

I asked my daughter, a professional translator, to help me understand
the passage. She reminded me that Italian is not one of her main
languages and that she normally translates into French (her mother
tongue), not English, but she produced this : 'That morning, as he
was leaving home, he told his wife not to wait for him for lunch
because he had a lot of work. He immediately went to the "Place de la
Salut" [Salvation]. It is paradoxical that a place with such a name
had been chosen to install the guillotine. In those years everything
was upside down.' She also remarked that it seemed to be a poem and
that the title referred to a date; 'Brumaire' is a month in the
French Republican calendar. This was interesting. How does chess find
its way into a story about the French revolution? I'll have to wait
for a full translation to find out.

I had better luck understanding the 18 essays under the 'Art gallery'
topic. Each essay (1) displays a well known work of art having chess
as the subject and (2) places the piece into an historical context.
Three of the essays cover the 15th century tempera on wood piece
known as 'The Chess Players', whose authorship is uncertain.

I have no intention of covering all of the topics; what is most
interesting to me may not be the most interesting to you. I'll stop
by mentioning that the Collecting topic covers Chess Collectors
International (CCI) and the Königstein group, both of which are
important groups of chess historians.

Returning to Coco & Crispi's main index page, let's look briefly at
some of the other subjects covered by the page. The 'Pietro Carrera'
project is an Italian language page introducing an idea to distribute
early Italian chess literature via a CD. If, again like me, you're
not familiar with Carrera, there's a Chessvariants.com page at...

Carrera's Chess
http://www.chessvariants.com/historic.dir/carrera.html

...with more information.

'Sicilian chess history (1500-1600)' is another Italian language page
covering the slice of space and time indicated by the title. It's
full of names attached to maps of Sicily.

As I was preparing to write the final version of this review, a new
subject appeared on the index page...

Kaissa, the goddess with the hidden face
http://supereve1.supereva.it/

...This page is formatted in the same structure as the
carmelo111.supereva.it domain that I've been discussing until now;
there are seven new essays under three topics, with Coco listed as
the only author. It's not clear why these essays are under a
different domain. Perhaps the original site exceeded a limit imposed
by Supereva.it.

Coco & Crispi's index page also links to biographies for the two
authors -- whose full names are Carmelo Coco & Carmelo Crispi --
plus 'the staff', most of whom have contributed essays to the site.
Gianfelice Ferlito is listed against 47 essays, more than either Coco
or Crispi. There is a section listing new essays added to the site,
as well as a list of previous 'what's new' features. Six essays were
added after I calculated the counts given a few paragraphs above.

---

If you're at all interested in the art and culture that surrounds
chess, then I'm sure that you will find material on this site that is
new to you. The essays are thought provoking and offer many clues to
why a simple game fascinates so many people in so many different
cultures throughout the world.

I don't usually comment on the look and style of the sites that I
review. All of them have been created and maintained by serious,
dedicated people who donate their time and other resources to
promoting chess and its history unselfishly. I'm also one of the last
people who should comment on the creative work of others; anyone
familiar with my own efforts knows what I mean!

Having said that, a site which purports to be the 'first site of
chess art and culture on the Internet' has to be held to a higher
standard than other sites. Overall, the Coco & Crispi site makes a
less favorable impression than many of the other sites that I've
studied for these reviews.

I've already mentioned the annoying little popup window, which, if
left alone, almost renders the site unusable. I just closed
its 'properties window' to return control to the popup and there it
is again, popping up constantly as I write these lines using Notepad,
interfering with my work. Does its creator really think that it is
the most important task running on my computer?

There are many spelling errors on the English language pages which
could easily be caught by an automated spelling check, either before
or after a page is loaded onto the server. One glaring example is a
reference to 'Hexagonal chesss' [sic], the title of an article in
preparation under 'MISCELLANY'.

The grammar can also be confusing. Behind the 'INDEX' button is a
function called 'CLOSED INDEX'. When I saw this, I guessed that it
referred to an index of closed articles. In fact, it should
say 'close index', because that is what it does. I appreciate that
English is not the primary language of the authors, so why not ask
on the index page for help? There are many able people who would be
willing to proofread in order to have their name listed with the rest
of the staff.

Italians are world famous for the quality of their design -- cars,
clothes, furniture, tableware -- you name it, the Italians often
design it better than anyone else. A Google search for the
phrase 'Italian design' returns 'about 14,300'. By comparison, the
phrase 'French design' only returns 'about 6,780', less than half.

Unfortunately, the quality of design does not (yet) extend to these
Web pages. The items on the index page are presented at random,
without any unifying structure. The most important element,
the 'INDEX' button, is below the fold, meaning that you have to
scroll down at least one page to see it. Even then, its importance is
easily overlooked. I've never seen the results of a formal study, but
I suspect that people read/scan Web pages the way they read/scan a
newspaper, top to bottom, left to right. Until recently, this would
have meant first clicking on the Pietro Carrera project, which is far
from being the most important item on the index page.

The index structure itself is overly complicated. What value does
the 'INDEX' button and its associated Javascript trick really add?
Why are there separate index pages for a dozen different topics, half
of them listing less than ten essays? Why not just have a page
listing all of the essays with appropriate links to the English and
Italian versions? Most people finding the main page are not going to
take the time that I did to discover the rest of the site. And that
is a real loss for chess history, chess art, and chess culture.

Nitpicks? Maybe. In the ongoing struggle to find a good balance
between form and content, content has won here. Many people would
find that perfectly acceptable, but I find that the form here is
suffocating the content. That's a real pity for such promising
content.

Bye for now,
Mark Weeks

---

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