Ephitaph of Chess Pieces

Epitaphs for Chess Pieces is an immersive new media installation that transforms the strategic logic of chess into a poetic meditation on memory, sacrifice, power, and remembrance. The project constructs a ritualistic digital cemetery where every captured chess piece receives a generative epitaph—an algorithmically generated memorial text that honors its role within the unfolding game.

The work reimagines the chessboard not merely as a battlefield of rational strategy, but as a symbolic landscape of human decisions, where every move contains emotional weight, ethical tension, and existential consequence. Each fallen piece becomes a narrative fragment within a larger archive of memory, transforming gameplay into a ceremony of remembrance.

Inspired by the linguistic roots of the artist’s name—“Zi” (紫), meaning purple, and “Yi” (弈), referring to the art of playing chess—the project interweaves personal identity with the metaphors of strategy and fate. The chessboard becomes a philosophical stage where life’s decisions unfold through movement, conflict, sacrifice, and transformation.