Eyes IX Discussion

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Mike Bentley
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Eyes IX Discussion

Post by Mike Bentley »

I think all of the mirrors for this tournament are now over. The set is available here: https://1drv.ms/f/s!Ag6r4laHo3wdjPI6gIE3W-Uc7unwMg

Following the discussion from the last version of this tournament, I tried to be a bit more systematic in how I constructed this set. I did more planning of answers ahead of time. Hopefully this resulted in a set that was a bit more uniform in terms of distribution and difficulty.

There were probably a couple of tossups that worked out less well than would have been ideal. The Frieze of Life tossup was probably a bit too transparent given Munch's distinctive style and only having one real series of note. The gladiator tossup was also a bit easy to figure out given the limited range of potential answers. Artists who have very distinctive styles remain a little challenging to ask about in this format. The tossups on Kara Walker and James Turrell probably fall into that category, although since they're on the harder side there's maybe a little be more room for latitude. And there were a couple of tossups that surprised me with how hard they played (Mad Meg, William Rush).

I still have plenty of ideas for future versions of this tournament (including an ideas list that is currently 623 items long, even after purging some of the more difficult answers). But with other commitments there will likely be a longer turnaround time between Eyes IX and Eyes X. I wouldn't expect one until at least 2019. I should also note that I do not have a monopoly on tournaments of this type and if someone wants to write their own visual arts tournament I'd love to play it.
Mike Bentley
Treasurer, Partnership for Academic Competition Excellence
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University of Maryland, Class of 2008
A Dim-Witted Saboteur
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Re: Eyes IX Discussion

Post by A Dim-Witted Saboteur »

I know I was slightly flummoxed by the train from Pather Panchali being put in power for the Apu Trilogy tossup; this is definitely a far more famous scene than what came after it based on what I've read. That wound up deterring me from buzzing until almost the end of the tossup. That's probably the only answerline that I have enough knowledge on to critique; there may be other issues that I couldn't catch. I agree that with answerlines like Walker, who gets the tossup is likely to be decided by who can recognize their style first. With a visual tournament, though, that's largely founded on such recognition skills, I don't think that's necessarily a bad thing. Overall, I enjoyed this set a ton despite not knowing that many things about art (see my statline) and look forward to the next iteration!
Jakob M. (they/them)
Michigan State '21, Indiana '2?
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