Artist Statement

Black to Move?

Is there still a move for us to make?

Since we were outplayed by a superhuman opponent, I cannot stop asking: is there still a move for us?

The answer may hide inside another question: where are we in the game? In Go, the move number is always known. In life, not at all.

Even knowing our place in the game does not reveal the move. It does change what remains possible. Superhuman intelligence expanded our sense of the possible and also revealed the limits of our intuition. Using Go as a language, I painted a series of potential “next moves.”

  • Move 1 Maybe building AI was our opening move.

  • Move 37 Maybe the best move looks like a mistake at first.

  • Move 78 Maybe one move in 10,000 is still ours to see.

  • Move 106 Maybe calamity struck...

  • Move 107 …and we picked up the stones and played on.

  • Move 209 Maybe we lost the match the grid warped a little.

  • Move 411 Maybe we are deep in a grinding ko ...

  • Penultimate Move Maybe the game has already changed before it ends.

  • The Last Move What does the last move feel like?

  • Move 0 Or maybe we are only beginning to understand the game.

The move numbers come from different games and do not represent comparable positions. As the count climbs, my understanding becomes increasingly speculative. Yet they all share one thing in common: someone was there to count them. Someone kept playing. At the same time, we strive for mastery, not just presence. Counting is necessary, but is it sufficient? And if we are no longer the best at counting, do we still count?

I began with Move 78—the only human win against AlphaGo—because it made me question: if one move in ten thousand was still visible to us, what else might remain possible? I do not claim to have found the answer. Go players keep playing. Painters keep painting. We continue to count the moves, suspecting that the count is neither the position nor our destiny.

Black to move.