Chessmachine

Chessmachine emerged from the partnership of minimalist sound designer Ivan Pavlov, known as COH, and Richard Chartier, founder of the Line Records imprint. The project merges performance art with live collaboration, as the pair steps onstage to stage a tongue-in-cheek revival of the charged rivalry once played out in Cold War chess encounters between the United States and the U.S.S.R. Instead of moving pieces across a board, they trade brief audio fragments that serve as successive moves. Each participant’s material progressively colors the other’s, until the resulting pieces become nearly impossible to attribute to their original sources. Their debut meeting unfolded at Montreal’s acclaimed MUTEK festival in 2004 and was preserved on CD by the festival’s own label. Later engagements have occurred worldwide, among them a Los Angeles appearance whose results were issued in limited edition by Chartier’s Line label in 2005. To date, the contest remains without a declared winner.