The Laser Chess
Game Creation when no one asks you to

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The rule of thumb in the first year of college is: bend the rules to see how far they can go. The teacher asked the students to build a game with resin pieces, just so we would know how to mould in resin. We added dry ice, acr ylic tubes and a laser beam. Laser Chess is a strategy game for two player s. Each one has four semi-spheric pawns (molded after a hlf cutte billir ball) with a mirror face, and the game objective is to reflect the central laser beam until it hits the opponent’s goal, an acrylic tube which glows red when illuminated. The game was constructed on a 1.2 m (4 ft.) high table with a space under which there is a blue light and a solidified carbon dioxide vapour. For the laser beam we had to unbuild many laser pointers until we figured out how to make it work with ordinary batteries. The final presentation was held in a dark room, with techno music and purple lights.


Laser Chess was designed and built in 2001, in participation with Ricardo Bacellar, Rodrigo Rego and Daniel Veloso. Those images are actual unaltered photographs of the working model.

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