SPECIAL MOVE

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This sculpture is largely influenced by the hundreds of hours I spent as a teenager playing Street Fighter II, trying to perfect Ryu’s Dragon Punch special move and watching Power Rangers every day during the summer holidays.

The secret abilities of computer game characters, usually only unleashed through a complex series of button pressing, are commonplace in even the oldest computer games and usually the key to winning the game and beating your opponent.

The Mighty Morphin Power Rangers were a group of spandex clad superheroes that each controlled a giant, animal-shaped robot called a Zord. Inevitably whatever monster was attacking the city at the time, just as the Power Rangers began to get the upper hand, would suddenly and inexplicably grow many times larger to Godzilla-sized proportions. This would occasion the need for the Power Rangers to combine their powers; the individual Zords would transform and combine into a far larger humanoid robot called the Megazord able to do battle with the giant monster.

These days I play chess quite a lot and the anachronism of applying the computer game standard of the special move to this ancient board game appeals to me. That somehow it might be possible at the start of a game rather than simply moving a pawn or a knight into play that your entire chess army could combine into an unstoppable Megazord-style creature that would run rampage over the enemy and immediately destroy your opponent's king.

INFORMATION

Title Special Move
Year 2007
Materials Wooden chess pieces & board, wire, glue
Dimensions H:25cm W:30cm L:30cm

ADDITIONAL

  • Check out the official flash-tastic Power Rangers website
  • If you don’t want the inconvenience of going to the shops to buy a chess set or make friends to play with why not play chess online
  • Special Move was exhibited in the Nottingham Castle Open Exhibition in 2007 which took place in the now defunct Angel Row Gallery.
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