The last IDEOTAGs hit the streets this morning. There are 12 hours remaining to find and claim them before the winning guild is announced and their strategy to rezone the city through play will be presented to the City of Melbourne.

Actually, it’s hectic here as the finishing touches three urban planning proposals. We have seen a preview of the Master Codemaker’s concept with some players cracking its code. With the Urbanists leading, their guild master now has faith in the agency of autonomous systems. However, the Crossmedia Ecologist still remains to be seen…

Events outside of our control or augur have extended the running time of our program in the city at the same time as we have overtaken the Master Codemaker‘s score.

This is an uncertain time. We had given up, running only the barest systems necessary to function, but now it appears as though our program has been running without us being there to witness the results.

Perhaps we have been too hasty in retreating. Perhaps there is still time.

Storms and flooding delayed deployment of 48 final IDEOTAGs. Any tags deployed last week are now likely far from their home. Eight IDEOTAGs were placed yesterday with more to come tomorrow and early Wednesday… these will mark out the final sites surveyed by the Urban Codemakers.

The end of game has been extended until midnight this Wednesday 9th February 2010. All IDEOTAGs must be claimed at that time to be counted towards the final score.

At this time the proposals currently being finalised by the guild masters will be posted online for your feedback. In the meantime ‘Jampd’ and ‘chicken’ are already cracking the Master Codemaker’s code…

Watch this space…

Brief update with 4 days to go. Score is: CE 82 /  Urbanists 205 / Codemakers 211

Crossmedia Ecologist: she is missing in action. Strange coincidence given this. Posting it on your own blog won’t draw suspicion…

Locative Urbanist: renewed hope with a score of 205. The autonomous city-cum-program lives again?

Master Codemaker: off on his own mission it seems. Check this out and the message received from him in the field – – –

‘The revelation is at hand.

The MasterCodemaker invites players to seek out the final co-ordinates in the Ludean origins of Melbourne.  Two maps will be shortly posted that will guide you to your final destinations.  Seek out the true identity of Rebus Stroller!’

MC.

Rezone the city through play indeed.

Does it come too late? Have operatives finally found a way to not only implement, but also become our initial program? We look on the number of tags being gathered and we wonder – was this always the program that was being run? Were we merely part of something bigger? Is it less that we are watching the city and it is in actuality watching us? Is it more likely that the inhabitants – those who we exhorted to gather & process, run and interface – were creating a system designed to show us something. Was it about life? About futility? About showing us hope and then dissolving it into the unknowable chaos of something larger?

As we look at the numbers, with 181 ideotags gathered, a rounding error away from the Master Codemaker’s 208, we wonder – is our program being run now? Is it, as we write this missive, stretching out again across the city? As we are considering spinning down our drives and flushing our memory cores, should we be doing the opposite? How much is being missed as the program is run without our observation? In these last few hours, are we about to see the big-bang we have been waiting for all this time?

We find ourselves hopeful. Without data, without information, without connection, that is all we have. Will that be enough in these final few days? We will see.