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Between Nottingham and Exeter, 18 October 2006

While I am in a meeting with Steve Benford at Mixed Reality Lab to discuss the details of a bid, I arrive at the Lock. LYSISTRATA is here, carrying a sick dog. CLOUDYSUNNY is around too. There are some branches and ladders nearby. CLOUDYSUNNY asks me if I know how to save dogs and whether I’ve seen any interesting things lately. I have learnt that there is a new doc at the hospital and so I suggest that we all go there. CLOUDYSUNNY who wants to see something interesting is happy to join, whereas LYSISTRATA, who still has to recover from her travels, wants a quiet time. She is carrying a sick dog. I feel sorry to leave her as it has taken me so long to find her again.

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The meeting is very productive and, as usual, I learn a lot about the different ways in which our disciplines work. I find that although I have not switched off the phone, I do not want to check the messages while we talk. Steve Benford, however, is having to run many things simultaneously, and so I do get the chance to play Day of the Figurines while he is out of the room. In the middle of it all I get a dilemma: ‘2 men in sharp suits run towards the timber yard with jerry cans’. What do I do? As a consequence of my answer I get hit on the face by a broom and start bleeding.

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It’s good that I am on my way to the hospital. While I travel between destinations, I feel that the time has come for some postmodern philosophy. This world, the one that I have been in for over 20 days now, is a world entirely made of signs in which, in Baudrillian fashion, everything operates in a ‘tautology of the signifier’ thus creating value in reference only to itself (Baudrillard, 1998: 124). In Day of the Figurines messages come from other players, or from the game itself. Both tiers of messages are equally important and although it is always clear what comes from whom it is not always clear which type of message has the strongest impact. Through this ability to refer to itself, even quote itself, the game shows that it has a structure that, like a fold, can fall back upon itself. Like cinema, it could also plagiarise itself (there are continuous rumours in the game of things that have happened in relation to specific players – see the Trampoline gossip), it could copy itself (the code of my game is a copy of my blog, or is it?), it could replay and retroactivate itself (all data are stored) and even construct its own mythology. In Day of the Figurines, like in Baudrillard’s world of simulation, we, the players, are torn between the ‘different sign elements and the relationship between them’ (ibid.: 120). Continuously negotiating between our two worlds, we play with signs, which can really hurt and even kill.

The journey back to Exeter takes some 6 and ½ hours. I am exhausted and frustrated. I now worry that this documentation has been a waste of time. I have not had any feedback, except by Stefanie Kuhn and Nick Kaye, and think that this can only mean that I have failed to produce anything of interest to the scientists and artists in this project. I am angry with myself for failing.

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The new doc, alias HASSAN, is diagnosing PAUL with pre-traumatic stress disorder and recommends that he gets a sandwich at the 24 hour garage. CLOUDYSUNNY has also seen him and is now on his way to the bins in the hope to get an unemployment check. I wait for my turn, wondering how he’ll treat my poor face. Finally he has a slot for me. He wonders whether, ‘perchance’, it was a bear that inflicted my injuries. This sounds very exotic and I am too embarrassed to admit that they were inflicted by a broom that I myself picked up, so I invent this story about a white unicorn with a golden horn which sends BERLIN to sleep. HASSAN then goes quiet while BERLIN confesses that they feel irritated by my make-up. This confuses the doc who now thinks that I suffer from a skin allergy. Then the game goes quiet again – maybe BERLIN are right and my writing is just too dull to keep anyone engaged.

For my play tomorrow go to Day of the Figurines 19/10/2006

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