04 Bolte Bridge

Armed with my newly acquired skills in ‘covert surveillance’, I went about my daily routines with a sense of expectation. Neurocam played on my mind often and I found myself fantasising endlessly about the possibilities inherent in my last assignment. I felt special, as if I had a secret that I could not share with my friends and colleagues. Even on the dullest days at work I had something else to contemplate that made my life seem more interesting. I felt like telling the constant string of unfortunate victims to whom I was attempting to sell vacuum cleaners that I had something else more important going on in my life; I was not merely a lowly call centre salesperson. I was a Neurocam Operative and I had secret business to attend to.

At the end of another dreary day of cold calls and endless abuse from randomly selected members of the general public, I flopped down behind my laptop with a much-needed beer. Upon checking my email I experienced the usual rush of excitement when I noticed a fresh email from Neurocam with “NCI - 7061/01” in the subject header. It had been almost two weeks since I had last heard from them. As I read on I almost fell off my chair:

NEUROCAM ASSIGNMENT - NCI - 7061/01 - [COUNTER-INTELLIGENCE INTERCEPT] Area Search and Object Recovery

(A) AIM

The recovery of an object stolen from Neurocam International.

(B) CONTEXT

It has been brought to the attention of Neurocam’s Human Resources Security Division that a disgruntled Neurocam operative has been engaging in corporate espionage. Prior to this individual being identified, several high security rated documents and other company properties were removed from Neurocam’s Melbourne offices.

The operative responsible has been dismissed from the organisation, but, despite concerted efforts to the contrary on Neurocam's behalf to effect his detainment, he remains at large. Intercepted communiqués have revealed that the operative intends to transfer the materials, to persons unknown, via the use of a covert ‘dead drop’ location. Although HR Security personnel have managed to identify the general vicinity where this will occur, the exact location remains unknown.

Neurocam's intelligence reports suggest that the operative will secrete the object at the ‘dead drop’ at approximately 4pm on (date withheld for security reasons). It is also expected that the object will be collected by the alternate party at approximately 7pm.

It is critical that the materials are located and recovered without the engagement of the other parties. Ongoing intelligence operations depend on the insurance of the covert nature of this operation until at least seven (7) days after it is completed.

(C) EXECUTION

Below are the procedural details for this assignment. Any deviation from the operational protocol, outlined below, will result in disciplinary action, and likely dismissal of the operative/s from Neurocam International. If there are any doubts about this please contact operations (operations@neurocam.com).

1. At 4.45pm on the (date withheld for security reasons) you are to arrive at the location detailed in the map provided.

2. Please be aware that you will be met at this location by other Neurocam operatives.

3. Without revealing excessive personal information, you will need to operate as a team to search the area for the materials. You are to begin no earlier than 5pm.

4. Neurocam's intelligence reports suggest that it is likely that there will be one object at the location which contains or acts as a key to detecting and/or accessing another secure item, that likely contains Neurocam's proprietary materials. Once you have located and recovered the item use whatever means are necessary to *safely* retrieve the materials.

5. Once the materials are secured you are to vacate the area in an expedient fashion, removing only Neurocam's materials, and leaving the location as close to the condition it was in when you arrived.

6. All operatives are then required to submit a detailed report of their specific involvement in this assignment, and the nature of the events that occur, to the Operations Division (operations@neurocam.com) by close of business (date withheld for security reasons).

(D) OPERATIVE OCCUPATIONAL HEALTH AND SAFETY

It is known that part of the search area may be under water so sturdy, waterproof footwear will be required to facilitate a thorough search of the location.

(E) OPERATIONAL SECURITY

Operatives are strictly forbidden from revealing any details pertaining to this assignment. Any operative found doing so will suffer immediate expulsion from Neurocam.

Please note—due to the deployment of multiple operatives it is essential that all operatives display their Neurocam Identifiers throughout their participation in this assignment. This will enable operatives to verify each others’ affiliation and limit the potential for infiltration by operatives working against Neurocam International's interests.

(F) TIMELINE

It is essential that Neurocam Operatives do not arrive before 4.45pm. An early arrival may alert the rogue operative to our intentions.

In addition, to ensure the safety of all operatives, and the viability of continued counter- intelligence operations, it is critical that all operatives have vacated the search area by 6.30pm, prior to the arrival of the alternate parties.

Regards

Charles Hastings

Head, Operations Division Neurocam International

This was quite incredible. My mind raced with the exciting opportunities my new assignment opened up and I felt like an eager school kid who wanted to put his hand up and interrupt the teacher. Above all, I could see that a narrative was forming. Neurocam had finally imparted some additional information regarding their status and modus operandi. And, I was going to meet some other Neurocam operatives! I had always had a sense that I was not alone in this venture, but now this was to be confirmed.

Detaching myself from the initial giddy excitement this assignment brought on, I thought about the implications of the task. If Neurocam had indeed been the victim of industrial espionage, why would they attempt to engage unskilled volunteers like myself to clean up the mess? This seemed highly unlikely and signified a shift away from the realms of credibility towards something infinitely more theatrical. And did Neurocam really have ‘Melbourne Offices’? If so, why couldn’t I simply walk in the front door and speak to Hastings face-to-face? Something was indeed fishy, but in the context of what I had already undertaken, did not seem any less appealing. The general terms of engagement seemed to revolve around obeying their instructions without question, something that most definitely involved a suspension of rational disbelief. This brought to mind a fantastic quote from Fowles’ novel The Magus in which the mysterious prankster/puppet master Conchis tells Nicholas that, “I do not ask you to believe. All I ask you is to pretend to believe. It will be easier.”

So perhaps the parameters of whatever game Neurocam were playing revolved around participants accepting what they told us as if it were the truth, and acting accordingly. In the context of games, stories and theatre, this made sense to me. When I had been researching ARGs a few weeks back, I had come across an interesting article by game designer and theorist Jane McGonigal, who presented the argument that gamers maximise their interactions by simulating a belief system where they suspend rational disbelief in order to immerse themselves within a narrative. She states that:

The best pervasive games do make you more suspicious, more inquisitive, of your everyday surroundings. A good immersive game will show you game patterns in non- game places; these patterns reveal opportunities for interaction and intervention. The more a player chooses to believe, the more (and more interesting) opportunities are revealed.

To illustrate this point McGonigal cites the example of a 2002 ARG called the Go Game where a team of players were instructed via mobile phone to carry out a complex mission on the streets of San Francisco and found themselves in the lobby of the Hilton Hotel. Having already encountered several ‘plants’—actors hired by the game’s designers who had assisted them in carrying out their mission—they assumed that they would find another plant in the hotel’s lobby. When approached by a hotel staff member they thought that he was the plant and when he appeared unwilling to assist them in their task, thought that this was part of his ‘act’.

During my last assignment, I had experienced a similar kind of hyper-awareness in which I had found myself questioning the smallest details making up my immediate reality to the point where I had transposed my own (perhaps rather paranoid) narrative onto the situation. If I was to consider that Neurocam was a pervasive game, then I had to consider the possibility that I was equally responsible for fabricating some kind of alternate reality. Whoever I was going to meet at the group assignment would no doubt be part of the game in some way, whether they were players like myself, plants hired by Neurocam, or the puppet masters themselves.

Whatever type of experience Neurocam was, it was my sole intention at this point to maximise my immersion into its world. I was going to pretend to believe and treat everything they threw at me as if it were real. I wasn’t exactly sure of the implications of this approach, but I figured I would find out soon enough.

On a moody grey Sunday afternoon I drove down to the Docklands area wearing my Neurocam Identifier badge and a shiny new pair of gumboots I had purchased earlier in the week. I parked near the north wharf just before 4.45pm and walked towards the rendezvous point specified on Neurocam’s map. As I approached the area I saw some people fishing off the wharf and a young guy seated on a bench, obviously waiting for something. Although it seemed likely he was another operative, he seemed very self-contained and I didn't approach him, but instead went to the end of the wharf and surveyed the area beyond it.

Before long a car pulled up and a portly guy in his late twenties in a black t-shirt with dyed-black hair distinctively worn long at the back and almost entirely receded at the top, emerged from it and started looking around. I caught his eye and we approached each other, noting each other's Neurocam Identifiers as we drew closer. We introduced ourselves, both producing pens and notepads (his an A4 lecture pad, mine a little pocket notebook) to write down each other’s names, with some mutual amusement at the strangeness of the situation.

He identified himself as Shemjaza or Shem. We talked a bit about the assignment and characteristics of the location, including the people currently present at the scene. We decided to indirectly approach the young man sitting on the bench and see how he reacted.

His response to our approach was consistent with that of someone expecting to meet strangers, and once we had exchanged cursory greetings, he produced his identifier badge from his pocket. We then introduced ourselves; he gave his name as Roger. He was probably in his late- teens, skinny and very reserved. We discussed peoples' potential willingness to get their feet wet. Shem and I noted that we had both come prepared for this eventuality.

At 4.50pm another operative arrived on foot, a young Asian guy in a bright orange t-shirt who approached us with little hesitation. He introduced himself as Colin. Shem and I both got out our notebooks again.

We continued to talk about the assignment; what the two items were likely to be, how many people we thought would show up, etc. I'd brought a printout of the assignment briefing and read over parts of it aloud.

The next operative to arrive was a sturdy middle-aged man who gave his name as Auto 04, followed shortly after by an older woman called Arachni who sat down on the bench, lit up a small marijuana pipe and began inhaling the sweet-smelling smoke. She was obviously attempting to follow Neurocam’s widely advertised directive—‘get out of your mind’.

Next to arrive was a diminutive middle-aged man named American Guy, then a man in his twenties who arrived on a motorbike and introduced himself as Wintermute. Next arrived a woman in her twenties or early thirties called Bunny.

By this point, Shemjaza had fallen into the role of name-taker, and as such had become a focal point for the group. I was still standing next to him and also taking notes (apparently we were the only ones doing this) whilst those who had arrived subsequently were gathered around us in a vague semicircle, and I felt a bit like the deputy sheriff, although I didn't take any kind of leadership role in subsequent proceedings. Shem, on the other hand, sustained a vague leadership role throughout the operation.

I thought about the strangeness of the situation and the fact that everyone who had arrived so far seemed to be convincingly playing the role of Neurocam operatives on assignment. Even Shem’s assumed leadership role did not appear in any way suspicious; he appeared to be a natural leader and it was obvious that the operation needed some kind of organisation. I wondered if any of the people around me were secretly operating on another level, working for Neurocam as plants in order to steer events in a certain direction. I decided to keep a lookout for any actions that seemed in any way unnatural or contrived.

Next to arrive was Jonathan, a fresh-faced Apple Centre retail rep from Moonie Ponds. Shortly after that a guy probably in his twenties called Xade arrived accompanied by a woman of similar age who announced herself as Johanna initially, later defaulting to JoJo.

A large group arrived next. At Shemjaza's request, they announced their names: MK Ultra (male, in his 20s–30s?), Benjamin (male, teens), Tosh (male, unsure), Plasmo (female, teens or early 20s), Dubya (male, teens or early 20s), Fraggle (male, 50s), Tillops (male, unsure), BishBash (unsure), and Binkus (unsure). Following these arrivals was Fleegle (female, 20s?).

At approximately 5.10pm, Shemjaza asked for a show of hands as he wanted to know who was willing to get their feet wet. Maybe 10 or so people were. He proposed that those operatives explore the area beyond the edge of the wharf, meaning the rocks leading down to the water and around the pillars under the bridge, whilst everyone else covered the remaining area. A vague consensus was reached that anyone who found anything interesting should yell out and that if no-one was able to find anything after twenty-minutes or so, we should reassemble at the bench to re-think our collective strategy. Whilst these arrangements were being discussed, two more operatives arrived—Nathan (male, 20s) and Aliask (male, teens).

I opted to start off searching the rocks leading down to the water. I scrutinised many plastic bottles and peered into many nooks and crannies. I pulled a red plastic chair out of the water, but it was revealed to be just a red plastic chair. I moved down towards the bridge pillars and joined the group investigating that area.

At around 5.20pm we heard shouts from the surface of the wharf. A group had assembled around an area on its right-hand edge, facing the river. Operative Nathan had discovered a stoppered glass bottle suspended over the edge of the wharf on a length of string. The bottle was filled with yellow water, and contained a small piece of paper with Neurocam branding on one side, and the digits 236405 handwritten on the other.

Whilst this object was being examined and discussed, American Guy came over from his search area and showed us something of interest that he had discovered. He had a handbag filled mostly with women's clothes: a short black skirt; some stockings; some old-fashioned, very conservative underwear which, if I recall correctly, included a corset; a pair of circular plastic clothes hangers; a spare, unopened pair of stockings; a small plastic spray bottle, which may have contained deodorant or mouth-freshener; a leather belt; and a cheap shoulder-length red- black wig in fairly good condition. He had found this object and some other apparently related items under some bushes just outside the designated area.

These items were also examined and discussed. There was uncertainty about their relevance to the assignment. Some operatives including myself, Jonathan, American Guy and Benjamin, went to make further examinations of the bushes where the handbag had been found. Draped across the bushes were a sweater and blouse that seemed to belong with the rest of the clothes and a single, long stiletto boot. I did not establish whether these items had been found in that location or had been moved there subsequent to discovery.

I looked inside the boot and systematically unpacked the handbag. The banal, valueless nature of the items; their discovery outside the designated search area; and the absence of anything which could be connected with the number in the bottle amongst them, all pointed to the conclusion that they were not what we were looking for. I did suspect that Neurocam personnel planted these items for the assignment as a red herring. If this were the case, it would have meant that Neurocam had set up the circumstances of the assignment deliberately and that contrary to the briefing, we were not engaged in a genuine interception exercise. By why would they go to so much trouble to set up such an elaborate hoax?

I moved back into the designated area and went back to exploring the rocks. I encountered Xade, who'd discovered two paper napkins with interesting messages scrawled on them in pen, both dated 28/11/08. He said he'd found them inside plastic bottles amongst the rocks. One said something like "Max—Hi, how is everyone going? I'm in Australia. Hope you are good." The other said "[illegibly noted name]—Hi, here's a bottle and a bag." Just as I was wondering whether this meant that maybe the handbag was important after all, excited shouts began issuing from under the bridge to the effect that ‘it’ had been found. This was at about 5.40pm.

‘It’ turned out to be a metal briefcase, which had been discovered by Operative Dubya, partly concealed inside an opening on the underside of an overhead lighting turret, attached to the furthest pillar under Bolte Bridge, facing the river. The briefcase was unreachable without some kind of elevation. Fortunately, an old wooden ladder had been discovered in the area earlier and someone went and retrieved it. I wondered if this was a coincidence or if it had been deliberately planted there. Dubya scaled the rickety ladder and retrieved the briefcase. I was intrigued to note that the briefcase was identical to the one I had held in my possession for my earlier assignment. I wondered if any of the others had been part of that assignment and also made the connection. Perhaps this was a vital part of the narrative.

So far I had sensed a general reluctance from everyone present to talk about their Neurocam involvement and other assignments they had participated in. It was as if we were all scared to compromise our positions by breaching Neurocam’s clearly stated confidentiality protocols. Or it might have been because we were all collectively suspending rational disbelief by playing the game in a similar way. This created a strange atmosphere; we had to work together to complete the assignment at hand, but we were all paranoid about each other and who might be a spy or a plant reporting any misconduct back to the puppet masters.

Once Dubya had brought down the briefcase, we had to decide what to do with it. Shem pointed out that it was likely that this was the object we were supposed to intercept and we should simply take it with us, contact Neurocam as soon as possible and await further instructions. Dubya, being the one who found the briefcase, seemed to be acting somewhat possessively as if it was his prize to claim. Someone else wanted to open it and see what was inside. The majority favoured this idea in spite our instructions being to “use whatever means are necessary to *safely* retrieve the materials”. A discussion about how to open the combination locked briefcase followed and Aliask suggested using the numbers found in the submerged bottle as the code. The numbers worked and the briefcase was opened to reveal a small dictaphone.

Everyone gathered excitedly around Dubya as he played the tape in the device. A male voice, which had been digitally altered to disguise the narrator’s identity, welcomed us as if this moment had been expected. The voice identified itself as Charles Hastings and congratulated us on successfully completing the assignment, revealing that it had been a staged ‘team training exercise’. This seemed to me to be further reinforcement of the idea that this had all been staged as part of a pervasive game. I wondered if the people around me had formed the same conclusions. Hastings also instructed all present to acquire a white Japanese kabuki mask for use on a future assignment, which was to be cut away below the upper lip, removing the chin section. He reminded us to leave the scene as we'd found it, instructed JoJo to retain the briefcase, Bunny to retain the dictaphone, and reminded all of us to submit our assignment reports as soon as possible. It was more than a little creepy to hear Hastings refer to specific operatives by name and I got the feeling that this made us all slightly suspicious of Bunny and JoJo.

Several operatives made their own recordings of Hastings’ statement whilst it was played, including Ben and Aliask. General conversation between operatives ensued about the contents of the message, which many operatives including myself, had found difficult to hear all details of the assignment. Some operatives exchanged web and email addresses in spite of being uncertain of whether or not this was allowed. Someone was dispatched to return the ladder.

At around this point two males, probably in their early twenties arrived at the scene—one Asian, one Caucasian. The Asian guy was wearing a Neurocam Identifier. The Caucasian guy claimed, upon enquiry, that he had lost his, which made the company slightly hesitant, but it seemed to be generally accepted that they were bona fide operatives, despite an initial sense of communal suspicion that they might be interlopers, or part of some kind of setup. They made comments to the effect of, "What did we miss? Presumably everything?" To which their were general murmurs of confirmation. Shemjaza asked for their names. The Asian guy identified himself as Lord [Something] and the Caucasian guy said his name was Kane.

Xade and Jojo were standing at the base of the pillar directly under the lighting turret at this juncture; Xade was brandishing the two napkins for the benefit of various operatives who wanted to photograph them. I asked him if I could note down the messages. He gave the napkins to me. I copied out their contents (very illegibly, as it turned out) then handed them back to him.

With the assignment complete and the time approaching 6pm, everyone wandered back up to the end of the wharf and started to disperse. Shem, who'd come by car, asked if anyone wanted a lift anywhere, but no-one took him up on it. Walking up the wharf, I asked Ben if he'd be able to send me his audio file of the tape recording. I thanked him and walked back to my car.

That evening I reflected on the day’s events and my first experience meeting other people engaging in the same spurious activities as myself. I thought about the demographic; although the crowd had been mostly male there were several women present. I imagined that taking the kind of risks I had taken would be an activity possibly preferred by men, but I couldn’t be sure. I recalled the woman I had given the briefcase to and considered that perhaps Neurocam had all kinds of assignments; some interconnecting and others individual challenges. I didn’t really have enough information to speculate about the gender balance in relation to the tasks we were given. I had noticed that the age range was quite diverse ranging from people in their late-teens to mid-fifties. And judging by the clothing people were wearing and what I had gleaned from brief conversations with some of them, they didn’t seem to conform to any particular stereotype. Like myself, they were probably all drawn to the mystery of Neurocam and willing to play along with whatever they threw at us. Or did they have other motivations that I was unaware of?

I thought more about Jane McGonigal’s theory about pervasive game play in relation to the outcome of the assignment. Having the message from Hastings delivered via a dictaphone which we had found in a briefcase unlocked by a code found in a bottle seemed exactly like elements in the types of games McGonigal discussed and dissected. She was concerned with a new type of game, which began online and moved out into the real world, integrating real life with fabrication. Apart from a lack of labelling and a clearly outlined context, Neurocam could have been doing something very similar. And all of us wanted to believe that it was real; that we really were working together to solve this meta-narrative mystery. McGonigal claims that:

The key to immersive design is to realize that the clear visibility of the puppetmasters’ work behind the curtain does not lessen the players’ enjoyment. Rather, a beautifully crafted and always visible frame for the play heightens (and makes possible in the first place) the players’ pleasure – just as long as the audience can play along, wink back at the puppetmasters and pretend to believe.

I wondered if she had read The Magus. This all fitted beautifully apart from one key aspect: the work of Neurocam’s puppet masters behind the curtain was not visible. In fact they had gone to a lot of trouble to make sure that there was nil possibility of winking back at them while we played along.

Again I thought of The Magus and how Fowles rationalised the strange activities encountered by the main protagonist as a new concept in theatre. Conchis, a character written clearly in terms that McGonigal would identify as a puppet master, tells Nicholas that:

During the war, when I had a great deal of time to think, and no friends to amuse me, I conceived of a new kind of drama. One in which the conventional separation between actors and audience was abolished. In which the conventional scenic geography, the notions of proscenium, stage, auditorium were completely discarded. In which the continuity of performance, either in time or place, was ignored. And in which the action, the narrative was fluid, with only a point of departure and a fixed point of conclusion. Between these points the participants invent their own drama.

There was a significant difference between McGonigal’s puppet masters and what Fowles is proposing—Fowles was most certainly not talking about altering reality to facilitate some kind of game. If anything was discernible from Fowles’ obtuse story, it was pointing more to a type of art form that utilised the very fabric of reality to construct (aesthetic) experiences for participants. And yet this was altogether different from GK Chesterton’s idea of a society that manufactured experiences to inject some excitement into the lives of its subscribers. Perhaps The Magus was the key. The experiences constructed for the main character seemed to show him new ways of looking at the world around him as well as teaching him about his own psychology through exploring his relationships with others. It was plausible that this idea related to the power of theatre and immersive narratives to facilitate transformative experiences. I wondered whether Neurocam had already arranged a ‘fixed point of conclusion’, which would clarify things at some point in the future.

In the days that followed I thought more and more about Neurocam and what it was. I emailed a couple of operatives I had exchanged email addresses with on the assignment and asked for their thoughts on the matter. Both were reluctant to discuss Neurocam, which made me somehow suspicious of them. Disclosing details of assignments was clearly forbidden, but discussing the nature of Neurocam seemed reasonable. Perhaps they knew more than I did and had their own set of restrictions. When I wasn’t working I spent a lot of time on the Internet hunting around for clues as to what new activities were going on in the world that might have some bearing on the mystery I was embroiled within. The gaming world didn’t seem to have changed much over the last few months and pervasive games were still operating largely as either viral marketing strategies or interactive entertainment. There was no mention of any such games that were operating anonymously or subversively; authorship and terms of engagement were always clearly defined. The kidnapping business in New York appeared to be an enterprise that hadn’t caught on anywhere else in the world. I was all but out of leads when I received an email from a friend who was really excited about an art project she had recently participated in.

My friend was living in London and had heard about a performance art group based in Ireland who called themselves Ivan’s Dogs. Apparently these people attempted to create unsettling and unpredictable experiences for a diverse audience by taking willing participants on mysterious guided trips to unknown locations. They operated from a central website which deliberately offered minimal information about who they were and what they do, and always disguised their identities by wearing dog head masks. Generally they were said to regard their audience as prisoners, treating them roughly and forcing them to complete grueling tasks such as digging trenches in stony ground.

 

My friend related a fantastic and terrifying account of how she had travelled to Ireland for her ‘appointment’ with the Dogs and been roughly thrown in the back of a white van, driven to a deserted area above some seaside cliffs and made to dig a grave for herself while the Dogs continuously berated her. At one point she had needed to use the toilet and had been ushered to a filthy outhouse and locked inside for over an hour while her escort regaled her with colorful tales of the area’s local history. She said that although she had known that the experience was perpetrated by a group of performance artists, she had at times felt genuinely scared by the unpredictability of the situation and the performers’ relentless maintenance of character.

Very interested in the idea of a group of artists staging activities that were so similar to Neurocam, I emailed my London friend back and asked her for more details. The next day she replied with a link to their website and told me that she had heard about them through friends at an art gallery opening. In response to my question about how she knew that they were artists if their website gave away very little information, she said that she didn’t really know for sure, but her friends had told her that they had featured on an arts website. I brought up their website and it certainly didn’t mention anything about who they were or what they were doing beyond taking ‘appointments’. I googled them and came across a link to the arts website they were mentioned on. It was a site that featured reviews on various art projects happening in the UK at that time, and contained an article from a reviewer who had been on his own Dogs adventure. The article mentioned that the Dogs were a ‘performance art collective’, but did not refer to any of their previous projects, biographies or anything to substantiate this claim.

I found it fascinating that artists might engage in these kinds of activities; to give an audience an experience outside of the confines of the gallery space that was not a passive spectacle. In my understanding of performance art, artists had done some pretty crazy things, but the audience was still very much the audience, knowing that they were witnessing something done in the name of art. What was different in this case was the fact that the Dogs were creating tailor- made experiences for audiences, of which the outcomes were dependent on how participants reacted to the situation at hand. If someone was told to dig a grave, they had the option of refusing. If this happened I imagined that they would simply do something else.

I thought about the positioning of the artists themselves and how they chose to remain anonymous, rather than credit themselves as the perpetrators of the work. This was not something I had heard of before in the context of art practice and not something that I fully understood. I saw art as something clearly defined and the people who created it as always being somehow separate from the audience. As far as I knew the Dogs represented an entirely new precedent and something that related to Fowles’ concept of a ‘new kind of theatre’. The similarities to Neurocam were striking, although I hadn’t yet seen or heard of anyone who had referred to Neurocam as a new type of performance art project. I was excited, as this example seemed like a better fit than pervasive games, Chesterton’s Adventure and Romance Agency idea, and even The Magus. I decided to explore the idea that I was participating in a new type of art experience.