Very Deep Blue

In March 2016, Lee Sedol, the leading player of the strategy board game Go, was defeated by the computer program AlphaGo in a five-game match, shocking both the player and the audience. The match has been compared to the historic 1997 chess match between Garry Kasparov and Deep Blue. It marks a tipping point where a broader public began realising that computers would outperform humans in fields that seemed exclusively human.

Slightly edited press statements responding to the defeat are structured as a five-chapter narrative tracing a collective response to loss. Typed on a typewriter onto old paper from my parents’ place, the text curves gently within a handmade plexiglass box. Engraved on its surface are AlphaGo’s game moves in oval shapes, casting a soft shadow back onto the paper.