Friday night
It's Alive
Two of my 18 year old guests stayed to play after dinner. One had previous experience with The Settlers of Catan, while the other had no real game experience.
I brought out It's Alive and set it up without letting them see the box cover (and thus the designer's name). We played the basic game, which I won. I asked them how they liked it, and they both liked it and wanted to play again. Sweet.
As we were setting up to play the advanced game, I let them know who the designer was. I won the advanced game 58 to 48 to 43.
R-Eco
They liked the theme and the game. Thankfully, I didn't win this one, too. The score was 13 to 7 (me) to 5.
Saturday
The Talpiot neighborhood gaming scene is growing. I hosted a lunch of some of the local gaming fellowship: Bill and Shirley, Abraham and Sarah, Eitan and Emily, Nadine, and Adam. With company like this, I expect game night will continue even while I'm away in November.
El Grande
Eitan, Emily, and Sarah had not played El Grande, and Abraham had played only once. I told them that it was a required staple game. Nadine has a history of kicking butt in the game, and I told the other players that they could consider their score a "win" if they score at least 2/3 of Nadine's score.
Three hours later shabbat was over and they had finished round 6, whereupon they all quit. Nadine had something like 72 points, and her closest competitor was Emily at 47. So no.
Modern Art
Adam loves this game and wants to play it whenever he's over. We hemmed and hawed about it, but eventually I said let's do it, since I hadn't played it in a while, anyway.
The rest of us aren't fans of Modern Art. There are several problems with the game. The auction prices are too high for "once around" auctions. For a pair of paintings worth 100, anything player A bids, other than 99, is going to be outbid by player B and player C. The "name the price" auctions always favor the player to the left of the person setting the price, which, if your left-hand opponent tends to play, sucks for you. The double auction cards are always game breakers if one person gets too many of them; we fix this by dealing them out evenly to all players.
Other things that look like problems may not be. It appears that you should never win your own auctions (below half the value of the item); however, letting the person who is winning gain 49 to your gain of 51 may not be worth it. It might be better to gain only 35 and have your opponent gain nothing. Also, it's always best to be the one winning the auctions, so long as you gain 1 (obviously you want more, if possible). But the evaluation of prices adds a bit of complexity into the auctions, so you can't always know exactly where that gain of 1 is. And turn order matters a great deal; what's worth one thing to your LHO is worth something entirely different to your RHO, since your LHO is about to play the next painting, so gets to affect the valuations more directly.
So it's a tad more interesting than it seems. But I still don't like the auction price variance for once around auctions, and I don't like "name your price" auctions.
Adam won, but not by much. He had 567, Shirley 552, me 537, and Bill 480-something.
Pillars of the Earth
I taught this to both Bill and Shirley.
This game doesn't have a tremendous amount of luck, but the luck sometimes goes screwy and kills me. This time it didn't, thankfully, and I simply lost due to my own shortfall and Shirley's good play.
The game hinged on the last round. None of us had any money, so none of us could utilize the pay for VP cards. However, the craftsman who converted metal and wood to 6 was available on the board to a master builder. None of us had any metal. There were two locations to get metal: the usual taxes location, and one of the personalities. And places to get wood included the location that takes a cube from the market, and the personality who gives a stone and a wood. (I don't think anyone had a Woodworker, so none of us could buy the wood.)
When my master builder came up first, I paid my last 7 to take the taxes location in order to secure one of the metals. Really dumb; I should have secured the craftsman itself. Of course, if I did, both of the metals might have been taken by the other players, but at least none of them would have gotten the craftsman. Shirley took the craftsman and then both personalities without much difficulty. I sold the metal at the market and could buy 1 other good, but was one coin shy of buying an additional good.
Shirley won by one point, 54 to 53. Bill had around 45.
Showing posts with label modern art. Show all posts
Showing posts with label modern art. Show all posts
Saturday, October 24, 2009
Monday, July 23, 2007
How Marcel Duchamp Destroyed Our Copyright System
The arguments about copyright law have missed one important issue: that copyright applies ONLY to artistic and scientific works.
Copyright originally stems from the idea of encouraging useful and important works to be contributed to society by their creators. Copyright laws created a limited time period where the artist or scientist hold exclusive rights to their creations. During this time period, they collect money from others who want to buy or rent their works. After this time period, the work enters into the public domain.
For example, the U.S. Constitution reads:
The idea is straightforward: if the public will benefit by having your work, it is worthwhile encouraging you to produce it and make it available.
In order to receive copyright protection, you used to have to register your creation with the Register of Copyrights, for a fee. This changed in 1989 with the Berne Convention.
The Berne Convention essentially made everything copyrighted, with or without copyright registration or even copyright notice. Yet, even here, the language continued to imply that these laws apply only to works of artistic or scientific merit:
But the world changed about a hundred years ago, because of a guy named Marcel Duchamp, and many others like him. Marcel shook the artistic world by popularizing the ideas of "Conceptual Art" and "Found Art". By doing so, he destroyed the idea of copyright.
Conceptual Art is the idea that art requires no skill other than deciding what goes where. After deciding this, anyone with any skills whatsoever can reproduce the item. Found Art is the idea that anything an artist declares as art is art, even if the artist has done nothing more than identify it as such.
Both of these ideas are illustrated by Marcel's iconic Fountain, a presentation of a urinal on it's side with his handwriting on it. The idea was to deconstruct art altogether; to kill it's basic meaning. It succeeded. Fountain was voted the most influential artistic work of the twentieth century in one 2004 poll.
The consequences of this piece on the art world were tremendous; in my very humble opinion, quite negatively so. But the consequences on the laws of copyright have never really been examined.
For if, originally, a work in the artistic or scientific field originally meant something with skill, merit, or importance, now it meant, quite literally, anything at all. It is not, after all, the province of lawyers and judges to decide what is or isn't art.
Marcel Duchamp's legacy is that all of the intended meanings of "authors and inventors" and "writings and discoveries" in the laws were lost. Now, this simply means: anyone and anything. Preserving the words "production in the literary, scientific and artistic domain" in the Berne Convention and the definitions of protected items within U.S. copyright law are now so much waste of ink; anything and everything is now protected, simply because the meaning of art has been destroyed. It may still say in the copyright laws that only "works of fine, graphic, and applied art" are protected, but if anything is art, what does this mean?
A grocery list - who's to say it isn't fine art? A line drawn on the sand - graphic art? The discovery of something that already exists - who's to say that the discovery isn't artistic, and not simply the writing about it, which is what the original wording says?
That's how we got to where we are now: people copyrighting their name, cooks trying to copyright recipes, every sentence written now automatically copyrighted. Regardless of whether or not the public will benefit from this "creation" once it becomes public domain.
Yehuda
Copyright originally stems from the idea of encouraging useful and important works to be contributed to society by their creators. Copyright laws created a limited time period where the artist or scientist hold exclusive rights to their creations. During this time period, they collect money from others who want to buy or rent their works. After this time period, the work enters into the public domain.
For example, the U.S. Constitution reads:
[Congress has the power to create laws ...] To promote the progress of science and useful arts, by securing for limited times to authors and inventors the exclusive right to their respective writings and discoveries.All other countries use similar language.
The idea is straightforward: if the public will benefit by having your work, it is worthwhile encouraging you to produce it and make it available.
In order to receive copyright protection, you used to have to register your creation with the Register of Copyrights, for a fee. This changed in 1989 with the Berne Convention.
The Berne Convention essentially made everything copyrighted, with or without copyright registration or even copyright notice. Yet, even here, the language continued to imply that these laws apply only to works of artistic or scientific merit:
The expression "literary and artistic works" shall include every production in the literary, scientific and artistic domain, whatever may be the mode or form of its expression, such as books, pamphlets and other writings; lectures, addresses, sermons and other works of the same nature; dramatic or dramatico-musical works; choreographic works and entertainments in dumb show; musical compositions with or without words; cinematographic works to which are assimilated works expressed by a process analogous to cinematography; works of drawing, painting, architecture, sculpture, engraving and lithography; photographic works to which are assimilated works expressed by a process analogous to photography; works of applied art; illustrations, maps, plans, sketches and three-dimensional works relative to geography, topography, architecture or science."... every production in the literary, scientific and artistic domain." A hundred years ago, anyone could have told you that a "production in the literary, scientific and artistic domain" meant something considered a work of literature, art, or science. After all, copyright law was created so that this "production" will be released into the public domain so as to benefit the public, overall. A grocery list wouldn't get this sort of protection one could reasonably assume. Nor a "discovery" of something that already exists.
But the world changed about a hundred years ago, because of a guy named Marcel Duchamp, and many others like him. Marcel shook the artistic world by popularizing the ideas of "Conceptual Art" and "Found Art". By doing so, he destroyed the idea of copyright.
Conceptual Art is the idea that art requires no skill other than deciding what goes where. After deciding this, anyone with any skills whatsoever can reproduce the item. Found Art is the idea that anything an artist declares as art is art, even if the artist has done nothing more than identify it as such.
Both of these ideas are illustrated by Marcel's iconic Fountain, a presentation of a urinal on it's side with his handwriting on it. The idea was to deconstruct art altogether; to kill it's basic meaning. It succeeded. Fountain was voted the most influential artistic work of the twentieth century in one 2004 poll.
The consequences of this piece on the art world were tremendous; in my very humble opinion, quite negatively so. But the consequences on the laws of copyright have never really been examined.
For if, originally, a work in the artistic or scientific field originally meant something with skill, merit, or importance, now it meant, quite literally, anything at all. It is not, after all, the province of lawyers and judges to decide what is or isn't art.
Marcel Duchamp's legacy is that all of the intended meanings of "authors and inventors" and "writings and discoveries" in the laws were lost. Now, this simply means: anyone and anything. Preserving the words "production in the literary, scientific and artistic domain" in the Berne Convention and the definitions of protected items within U.S. copyright law are now so much waste of ink; anything and everything is now protected, simply because the meaning of art has been destroyed. It may still say in the copyright laws that only "works of fine, graphic, and applied art" are protected, but if anything is art, what does this mean?
A grocery list - who's to say it isn't fine art? A line drawn on the sand - graphic art? The discovery of something that already exists - who's to say that the discovery isn't artistic, and not simply the writing about it, which is what the original wording says?
That's how we got to where we are now: people copyrighting their name, cooks trying to copyright recipes, every sentence written now automatically copyrighted. Regardless of whether or not the public will benefit from this "creation" once it becomes public domain.
Yehuda
Saturday, July 08, 2006
Weekend Gaming
First of all, my second boing from Boing Boing (for the previous article) is producing very different traffic patterns from the first one.
Last time, most of the traffic was directly from boingboing.net or from a Spanish equivalent microservios.com . This time the majority of traffic is coming from livejournal users reading BB as a feed using the "friends" feature. How strange. Are there so many new livejournal users? So many livejournal readers who read BB? So many people who no longer read BB on their web site? Or is this just a weekend traffic pattern?
Anyhoo ...
There was a lot of gaming this weekend at my house. I taught Tal how to play two-player Pinochle, one of the few reasonably good mainstream two-player cards games that I know. We also hosted guests for the weekend: David and Evida (non-gamers) and their daughter Adi.
Tal and Adi played many games, including Gin Rummy, Set, Oh Hell, Havoc, and Yinsh.
For Saturday lunch we had even more guests: Avi, Shari, and Amitai. Avi I had introduced to Settlers of Catan many years ago and they still often play it at their house. I haven't quite gotten him past it to new games, yet, although his kids have played a few other games, here and there. I had some success today.
First off, I got David (a minor miracle) and Avi and Adi and Tal playing Apples to Apples. Everyone loved it, even David. Amitai and Saarya joined for a second round of it later in the afternoon.
I also got in a game of Taj Mahal with Avi, Amitai, Saarya, and Tal. I've always maintained that Havoc bears a strong resemblance to this game, and Tal and Adi both confirmed that as soon as we started playing. Tal played with the same strategy she uses to play (and win) Havoc, which is saving up for the last battles.
This doesn't work quite as well in Taj Mahal, since points are cumulative depending on what you earned in previous rounds. Nevertheless, she came in a reasonably close second to me. I did very well because I managed to arrange, from the fourth turn onwards, to have an entire hand with only one suit of cards for the entire game. The scores were actually pretty close until the end of round 9 or so, and then I pulled ahead, followed by Tal. Great game.
Later, I arranged for Tal, Adi, Amitai, and Saarya to play Modern Art, which Amitai won. Both Tal and Adi said that it reminded them of Masterpiece. They would have played Masterpiece, too, if it wasn't already too late.
Meanwhile, I played Puerto Rico with Rachel and Nadine. I swapped in a few buildings on low rotation. The building set was:
The game was very strange, all along. Nobody produced coffee. Nadine had a monopoly on Tobacco. I took Factory and Wildcat Strikers. After using WS to prevent anyone from shipping one round, in order to ensure that I had a good position for the boats, I almost ended up buying it again, which can't happen during a normal game of PR.
I produced and shipped a lot of barrels. Both Rachel and Nadine build Large Businesses. Nadine ended with more shipping VP's because of that and the occasional locked Tobacco boat, but I had two big buildings to her one, and one of mine was Custom's House with a +8 bonus.
All in all, in addition to synagogue, nice meals, pleasant guests, and pleasant company, a nice way to spend the weekend.
Yehuda
P.S. A nice article by Larry Levy on the strange phenomenon of how some people think that thinking during a game is cheating.
P.P.S. And here's a whole forum for board games on Yahoo Answers that looks like it needs some new blood.
Last time, most of the traffic was directly from boingboing.net or from a Spanish equivalent microservios.com . This time the majority of traffic is coming from livejournal users reading BB as a feed using the "friends" feature. How strange. Are there so many new livejournal users? So many livejournal readers who read BB? So many people who no longer read BB on their web site? Or is this just a weekend traffic pattern?
Anyhoo ...
There was a lot of gaming this weekend at my house. I taught Tal how to play two-player Pinochle, one of the few reasonably good mainstream two-player cards games that I know. We also hosted guests for the weekend: David and Evida (non-gamers) and their daughter Adi.
Tal and Adi played many games, including Gin Rummy, Set, Oh Hell, Havoc, and Yinsh.
For Saturday lunch we had even more guests: Avi, Shari, and Amitai. Avi I had introduced to Settlers of Catan many years ago and they still often play it at their house. I haven't quite gotten him past it to new games, yet, although his kids have played a few other games, here and there. I had some success today.
First off, I got David (a minor miracle) and Avi and Adi and Tal playing Apples to Apples. Everyone loved it, even David. Amitai and Saarya joined for a second round of it later in the afternoon.
I also got in a game of Taj Mahal with Avi, Amitai, Saarya, and Tal. I've always maintained that Havoc bears a strong resemblance to this game, and Tal and Adi both confirmed that as soon as we started playing. Tal played with the same strategy she uses to play (and win) Havoc, which is saving up for the last battles.
This doesn't work quite as well in Taj Mahal, since points are cumulative depending on what you earned in previous rounds. Nevertheless, she came in a reasonably close second to me. I did very well because I managed to arrange, from the fourth turn onwards, to have an entire hand with only one suit of cards for the entire game. The scores were actually pretty close until the end of round 9 or so, and then I pulled ahead, followed by Tal. Great game.
Later, I arranged for Tal, Adi, Amitai, and Saarya to play Modern Art, which Amitai won. Both Tal and Adi said that it reminded them of Masterpiece. They would have played Masterpiece, too, if it wasn't already too late.
Meanwhile, I played Puerto Rico with Rachel and Nadine. I swapped in a few buildings on low rotation. The building set was:
- Wildcat Strikers 1/1: At the beginning of any round, you can sacrifice this building and return the colonists on it to the supply in order to change one of the phases this round into Prospector instead of its usual function.
- Small Fashion District 2/1: Trade indigo at +2.
- Forest House 2/1: You may take a Forest during Settler. Pay 1 less per building if you have 1/3/5/7/... Forests. [This is slightly upped from the official version. The ability to block someone else's plantation pick is removed. And I never play with both this and Hacienda. Also, see Beachfront.]
- Small Warehouse
- Guest House
- Large Market
- Office
- Beachfront 6/3: You may take a Forest during Settler. You have a "wharf" with a capacity equal to the number of Forests that you own.
- Factory
- Large Business 8/3: Pay 1 less for any building. Earn 1 bonus VP if you ship anything during Captain (once per Captain, not once per shipment).
- Large General Workhouse 8/3 (2 circles): Each occupied location on LGW produces any type of good when matched with an occupied plantation of that type.
- Wharf
- Cathedral 10/4: +1 VP/3 red building VPs.
- Distillery 10/4: +2 VP/sugar plantation (max +8).
- Fortress
- Custom's House
- City Hall
The game was very strange, all along. Nobody produced coffee. Nadine had a monopoly on Tobacco. I took Factory and Wildcat Strikers. After using WS to prevent anyone from shipping one round, in order to ensure that I had a good position for the boats, I almost ended up buying it again, which can't happen during a normal game of PR.
I produced and shipped a lot of barrels. Both Rachel and Nadine build Large Businesses. Nadine ended with more shipping VP's because of that and the occasional locked Tobacco boat, but I had two big buildings to her one, and one of mine was Custom's House with a +8 bonus.
All in all, in addition to synagogue, nice meals, pleasant guests, and pleasant company, a nice way to spend the weekend.
Yehuda
P.S. A nice article by Larry Levy on the strange phenomenon of how some people think that thinking during a game is cheating.
P.P.S. And here's a whole forum for board games on Yahoo Answers that looks like it needs some new blood.
Wednesday, May 10, 2006
Modern Art
Not on the previous topic of art.
Saarya called me from school again, asking me to make a pizza run and bring a game to play for up to five players. I would have no more than 1:45 to play, I would have to teach the game to beginners, and teenagers at that, and I didn't know exactly how many players it would actually be.
I brought Modern Art, figuring that that would cover five players, and Torres for two to four. Torres? They may be beginners, but they are pretty smart, so I figured I could make do. Last time I taught some of them Tigris and Euphrates.
There turned out to be five players, so we played Modern Art. Everyone had a good time, and we had some occasional onlookers and kibbitzing. The players were myself, guy on left (GOL), Dvir, guy on far right (GOFR), and Saarya, my son, on the right. Saarya started us off.
In the first round only three artists were played, but after that we ended up with all five artists every round. I knew that I wasn't doing too well. Prices were generally going high, but I seemed to lose out on most of them and not get quite as much in return. And, as usual, I had only one double the entire game, which pretty much sinks any chance of winning.
Dvir had the most trouble understanding the economics of the game. We kept having to explain to him why it is better to accept the 107 for a pair of paintings worth 120 rather than buy it for 108. I expected that this meant that he would lose, but since he usually accepted the advice, he ended up winning, and not by small change either. Something like 530 to 430, two 300 somethings, and me, with my paltry 250.
Why did I score so low? Because the 160 I spent on two paintings that looked like they would easily be worth 180 became valueless when no one else played them. It was painful, but it looks like I wouldn't have won anyway.
In other news: Studies suggest that Mousetrap sucks the testosterone out of male subjects.
Yehuda
Technorati tags: board game, board games
Saarya called me from school again, asking me to make a pizza run and bring a game to play for up to five players. I would have no more than 1:45 to play, I would have to teach the game to beginners, and teenagers at that, and I didn't know exactly how many players it would actually be.
I brought Modern Art, figuring that that would cover five players, and Torres for two to four. Torres? They may be beginners, but they are pretty smart, so I figured I could make do. Last time I taught some of them Tigris and Euphrates.
There turned out to be five players, so we played Modern Art. Everyone had a good time, and we had some occasional onlookers and kibbitzing. The players were myself, guy on left (GOL), Dvir, guy on far right (GOFR), and Saarya, my son, on the right. Saarya started us off.
In the first round only three artists were played, but after that we ended up with all five artists every round. I knew that I wasn't doing too well. Prices were generally going high, but I seemed to lose out on most of them and not get quite as much in return. And, as usual, I had only one double the entire game, which pretty much sinks any chance of winning.
Dvir had the most trouble understanding the economics of the game. We kept having to explain to him why it is better to accept the 107 for a pair of paintings worth 120 rather than buy it for 108. I expected that this meant that he would lose, but since he usually accepted the advice, he ended up winning, and not by small change either. Something like 530 to 430, two 300 somethings, and me, with my paltry 250.
Why did I score so low? Because the 160 I spent on two paintings that looked like they would easily be worth 180 became valueless when no one else played them. It was painful, but it looks like I wouldn't have won anyway.
In other news: Studies suggest that Mousetrap sucks the testosterone out of male subjects.
Yehuda
Technorati tags: board game, board games
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