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Between Germany and England, 2 October 2006

While I’m at the station, waiting for my train, leaving beautiful Charlottenburg and herewith Berlin, the game tells me that I have finally found HASSAN, who according to the Berlin operators, is an ‘interesting’ player. I wanted to find him to understand what an interesting player does, but was slightly thrown to find out yesterday who the player of this figurine was. Both HASSAN, who is carrying a stepladder, and I are poorly. FRL AGATHE is also here and the building is frighteningly empty.

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HASSAN wonders whether I want to use the stepladder or go back to Kath’s Café for a ‘chinwag’. I have no idea what a chinwag is. I am at the airport, standing in front of a pile of water bottles, and I have no one to ask. Of course the unknown is always an exciting possibility, and the Institute is just too scary for me. Chinwag it is then.

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We head to Kath’s Café. SEXY KIRSTEN is here, surrounded by the usual fry-ups. There is someone collecting for the Blue Cross. She smiles at me sympathetically and moves on. Lots of other people are here too, but it all seems rather quiet. I pickup another fry-up (must stop doing this) and realise HASSAN has arrived. He seems pretty ill. He suggests we should have a ‘cuppa’. I think he should have some fry-up or maybe even go to hospital. He says that when he last ate the fry-up it made him ill and reminds me the hospital is full of mrsa. I try to distract him with meaningless conversation but get nowhere. He then becomes increasingly obsessed with someone's wristband. This is interesting, I think. Unlike the other players I have met so far, with the exception perhaps of JOHN MORGAN, HASSAN does not waste time chatting or talking nonsense with other players (like I do) but rather plays the game. He seems to really know things, and knowledge, of course, is attractive. I can see why the Berlin operators watched his game so eagerly.

I realise then that this game is about acquiring knowledge or even acquiring knowledge about how to acquire knowledge. This process, within the world of the game, is indispensible for survival. This is partly because the game plays on the dialectics between the knowledge we need to know about in order to survive in the real, and the knowledge that we would like to have in order to survive in the game. And, of course, there are fascinating and uncanny overlaps between the two. However, knowledge about other players seems to be uninteresting in terms of, for instance, our health or familiarisation with the dynamics of survival that operate within this fascinating world. So, HASSAN's game, much more than mine, goes right to the point of play. I'll remember this and try out a few new game strategies for tomorrow.

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It is important to me, now that I am leaving Berlin, to reflect once more about the destinatons table. I realise, in its absence, how strong this was as a starting point for the piece. So, why is this such a vivid, 'live' space, eventhough nothing appears to be happening on it? Why did the audience spend ages just looking at it? What kind of surface or skin did it represent? I must go back to architecture once again to find some answers.

To explore the complexity of the merging of real and virtual in architectural practices, the architect Stephen Perrella elaborated the concept and practice of the hypersurface. These overlays of real and virtual ‘appear in architecture where the co-presence of both material and image upon an architectural surface/membrane/substrate is such that neither the materiality nor the image dominates the problematic’ (1998: 13). In this sense, Perrella shows, ‘the term hypersurface is not a concept that contains meaning, but is an event; one with a material dimension.’ (ibid.: 10). The hypersurface is therefore more than just a surface, it is a representation as well as a materiality. It belongs to both the iconic world of the image and the real. In fact, it implies their continuous, mixed, relationship with one another.

As pointed out by Marcos Novak, hypersurface is ‘an effort to see surface not as an Aristotelian delimiter of space but as the portal between worlds through which subjectivity emerges.’ (in Perrella, 1998: 88). A hypersurface is a surface with an excess, with a meta-dimension. As Perrella shows: 'hypersurface is a reconsideration of often dichotomous relationships existing in the environment. These binaries include: image/form, inside/outside, structure/ornament, ground/edifice and so forth; not as separate and hence static entities but as transversally-constituted fabrics or planes of immanence' (another word that keeps on coming back).

Hypersurfaces are generated in the problematic relationships that occur when binary categories conjugate because such divisions can no longer be sustained in isolation through either linguistic or material divisions.' (Perrella, 1998: 8). They are places of exchange, fleeting intertextual strata in which dialectical opposites interact and continuously contaminate one another. As part of the real they are bound to materiality, as image, film or photography, they are both intertextual and metatextual, and belong to the sphere of discourse.

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The Café is busy. BARNEY, an eight-year old boy, very clever, is also here. He says that he was advised to drop his wristband. He offers his wristband to HASSAN who in return gives him advice about how to drink tea. Meanwhile, I fly from Germany to England. I suggest that we all go to the sauna, but BARNEY knows it's shut until 2 and, instead, suggests a visit the Internet Café. I missed lunch and am hungry. I decide to eat another fryup at the Café before leaving. This, of course, makes me ill. I think that I must stop eating this sort of food.

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I decide to follow BARNEY to the Internet Café. There, I am told, there are a lot of sick dogs. I let HASSAN know where we are, in case he wishes to join, but I am not to hear back from him. This is 18pm and the game goes silent. I hear nothing back until the morning. I still don't know what I need to do to get better and am feeling poorly but I now something, from HASSAN's play, that I wish to pursue tomorrow.

Follow my game tomorrow at Day of the Figurines 3/10/2006

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