selectparks - Figurines Invade Berlin

Marta and I went to the launch of Blast Theory's new piece, Day of the Figurines, running for another couple of weeks here in Berlin. The process of signing up is not too dissimilar to the character creation process in AD&D, or perhaps more aptly described as setting up a character for a single player version of tabletop Warhammer, except the figurines represent urban characters, you don't carry an axe and it all happens in a gallery bar. Here's a snap of people choosing their figurines on the night - to put it all in scale.

Once done, we chatted to Blast Theory's own Matt and headed out for the night. Little did we know the night had just become a part of a playing field. It all became slightly clearer (if not somehow simultaneously more mysterious) when we received our first instruction, by SMS, the following morning:

Sun beats on the windscreens of parked cars. You're at the edge of town. You are feeling run down.

The board itself looks fantastic, somewhere between a pop-up book and a town-planner's lucid dream of a city whose landmarks mark fateful events. Using a simple trick with a mirror and a projector, the board can also receive overlays of data updated in time with the movements of players: instructions are passed to a controller on-site which moves a player's figurine to a location prescribed by the laser. Here's a snap nicked from The Presence Project's page on the Berlin leg of the game.

If you're in Berlin, see you on the board..