The Glass Bead Game

1. The Glass Bead Game Cj Patel, Brandon Kunkel, Jesse Heggs, Jon Hankenhof

2. Chinese Checkers • Chinese Checkers is divided into 6 different sides • And each marble moves over the next in order to take over the other team’s triangle. • How we think it relates to a Chinese Checkerboard • Originally there were different disciplines that people would pick and play with. • First there were fewer disciplines involved, but over time the game advanced and more and more disciplines were added. • For example, initially it could have been History, Fine Arts, Culture, Sciences, Math, & Philosophy • The player would take their individual spheres of a certain discipline and move them towards the center; • the goal being to see how they could unify • their element with another. • Eventually over time, the game changed to a 3-D model.

3. 3-D Evolution • It’s our theory that in Knecht’s time, set hundreds of years from the original creation of the game, the game became a 3-D Holographic space where two players from opposing sides would “duel” with different disciplines in order to find coherence and unity amongst things. • This way, the setting the game up would require quite a bit of work, which connects to how Knecht and Fritz had to plan things far ahead, and it sets the stage for which the Annual game became a festival or stage for people to come visit the spectacle. • On the smaller scale, students and amateur players could have a small scale game that is maybe the size of the picture shown below.

4. How the game works • The players stand up to their respect sides of the field and pick a discipline. Like how the original glass beaders would pick a discipline, current players would get a bag, or a pouch which is filled with holographic beads that pertain to a certain discipline. • The beads contain formulas, rules, notes, special data, etc… that deals with the specific discipline. However players can earn better beads by the use of studying subjects and finding deeper methods and rules to a discipline. For example if a student, or player has beads of that deal with linear algebra, the more they study mathematics and understand theorems, they can use new beads that contain calculus and geometric topics that can help them. • There would be the holographic space, and a topic or a connection would be announced, for example, “Players, your Game today is “Fundamental Calculus and Shakespearean Poetry.” • Using the holographic beads from their pouches, the players would then construct a model ground up, They would start with basics, one player allowed to note the basic similarities amongst the disciplines.

5. How the game works (Cont.) • Then after player one has started with their bead, the opponent, player two, starts with their bead, either proving how their opponent is wrong, or how to build on the basic structure of their opponent. • The goal is to take many beads as you can from your pouch and develop a structure in 3-d dimensions or what could be called the “grid”, that relates both fields and helps seek coherence and find unity amongst these two things. • Often times game players may create their structure in a 3-d shape just to entertain the people who watch games. • However as deeper and more complex players go, the more and more disciplines are added, and the more and more they have to connect them. • For example, two starters at most start with 3 disciplines, but someone like Knecht might as well be competing with up to 50 disciplines at once; the key goal based on how important each discipline is to the other and the unity behind them.

6. How the game works (Pictures) • A bead as seen the in the hand of the player • A bead placed by the player • Grid Interface with the beads launched and growing

7. Why This Design? • We think that originally the game started off on a small scale, and the concept to us seemed very similar to Chinese checkers because the marbles represented beads, moving in towards the center of the board would relate to unity and coherence of different disciplines. However we agreed that this would be a basic model and it had to have evolved over time as mentioned in the book and in class. • Ergo we made the game into a 3 Dimensional game space so it could provide a spectacle to watch for the public, yet take the idea of transdisciplinarity to another level. • However as players in Knecht’s time stopped playing with beads, our model may be not be in accordance to what Hesse saw. But it was much easier for us to think on a game that involved using the beads, just in this case, they could expand and retract with different ideas.

8. Work Cited • From Iron Man 2 and Google Images