Eyes That Do Not See - Visual Tournament Side Event

[Mike Bentley]

This is a re-announcement for the Visual Tournament I announced last year, where tossups are on works of fine arts (mostly painting, sculpture, architecture and photography) and displayed on a projector in a pyramidal fashion. It will probably be a singles tournament because it will be hard to find multiple rooms with projector equipment set up.

Here's an example of what a question might look like (albeit it's pretty easy): http://doc-ent.com/quizbowl/Visual%20To ... xample.ppt

I have the images selected for 45 tossups so far. I'd wager it takes about a minute to do each tossup, since there will be 5 second transitions between 6-11 images per question, and you need to factor in time for people to buzz. This means the tournament will currently take about an hour, maybe less. I'm thinking of writing around 100 tossups, which will result in a tournament that takes about 2 hours to play. I could possibly create some more if there's demand, but I'll probably cap it at that to see how the experiment goes.

The answers range from very easy to very challenging, but for the most part they're pretty accessible.

I'm willing to have this side-event run for free at any tournament that wants to run it. It obviously requires a projector. My initial thoughts would be on the evening after a tournament like Penn Bowl, T-Party or Buzzerfest, or--to attract greater participation--during ICT or Fake ACF.

[Mike Bentley]

Ok, this tournament is going to be run at T-Party (or at least the Minnesota mirror of that tournament). It will be around 100 tossups in length. If you are running a T-Party mirror and are interested in hosting this tournament, please let me know by e-mailing me at [email protected].

[Mike Bentley]

I anticipate that I should be finished with this tournament in the next two weeks or so. It will be 100 tossups. If you're interested in mirroring it, let me know. It need not be tied to T-Party if you have another event you want to tie this into.

[Mike Bentley]

This tournament should be finished later tonight.

If anyone wants to run this for ACF Winter, it's available.

[Mike Bentley]

Here are the sites running the tournament so far:

ACF Winter:
Texas

T-Party:
Minnesota
Maybe VCU

[cchiego]

This tournament was indeed held at Stanford. I believe Sam from Berkeley edged Ray Luo 220-215 or so with myself coming in a distant third at around 130-140ish.

It was also some of the most fun I've had playing quizbowl in quite awhile. Mike did a great job with it and I encourage people around the country to play it if you can. It definitely tests a different side of your brain and rewards visual learners quite well. I hope to see if more tournaments like this can be written and held. Thanks again to Mike for providing it.

[Mike Bentley]

Here are the stats:

Sam - 220
Ray - 215
Chris - 160
Auroni - 155

Everyone else significantly less.

[mpellegrini]

Is this set posted anywhere? (Or going to be posted anywhere?)

[Kouign Amann]

Is this set posted anywhere? (Or going to be posted anywhere?)

It is still going to be played at several sites in the near future.

[Mike Bentley]

Just as a reminder that this set is still off limits for discussion until 2/27. If you have any specific feedback you want to give me, you can e-mail me at [email protected]

[Cheynem]

This was a very fun set. There's all sorts of coolness in this set, so play if it you get a chance--I guarantee you will have fun even if you suck at art like me.

At our site, the one and only MICHAEL ARNOLD won it, followed by Rob Carson and Andrew Hart who tied for second. Paul Baker, a Wisconsin graduate, was next.

[Papa's in the House]

Not knowing anything about the visual arts, I enjoyed this set.

Centre
Bryan - 340
Mike - 290
David G. - (-15)
me - 10
too many others to list...

EDIT: My memory is faulty when I don't write things down.

[powerplant]

Yeah, I just want to mention that running this tournament helped me see some really cool art things I'd never actually seen before, and sparked some interest where there previously hadn't been much. Thanks to Mike for putting this set together.

[Captain Sinico]

I'm pretty sure it was 340-290 as it wound up (TOO MUCH NEGS!) Ike was third with something in the mid-hundreds, I think.

MaS

[Duncan Idaho]

Just as a reminder that this set is still off limits for discussion until 2/27. If you have any specific feedback you want to give me, you can e-mail me at [email protected]

Will this set be posted once all mirrors are complete?

[Mike Bentley]

Just as a reminder that this set is still off limits for discussion until 2/27. If you have any specific feedback you want to give me, you can e-mail me at [email protected]

Will this set be posted once all mirrors are complete?

Yes.

[itsthatoneguy]

I really enjoyed this. There was a lot of variety and interesting clues. I would love to play something like this again in the future.

[marnold]

This was a great idea and great execution too. I like looking at art, but I'm only sporadically rewarded for doing so in quizbowl (especially compared to a PPG maximizing strategy like, say, rote memorization of a bunch of titles, teachers and students). I really loved this tournament because it did the exact opposite and I'd enthusiastically play another version of this.

[Kouign Amann]

Yeah, even though I only got to play three rounds of this, from what I saw, I thought it was a very cool side event. It rewarded art knowledge in a very different, much realer way than I think quizbowl normally can. I appreciated that. I, too, would play this again.