Images & more detail to be added soon:

INTRODUCTION

Created by Gary Hayes and Christy Dena © 2005 for an ABC TV LAMP residential

BACK STORY

The story talks about an experiment that took place at the University to ‘relatively’ speed time up for the observer, by ‘time-slicing’ – cutting time into segments and getting rid of the ‘boring bits!’ . The story hidden on the itvformats.com site is written in very measured tones, but has an air of paranoia. Johnnie was sworn to secrecy but got caught up in industrial espionage and under the banner of an entertainment, interactive formats site, he was the webmaster passing information about the time slicer to competitors ‘WalMax’ – a company involved in drug trafficking amoungst other things. The WalMax heavies banished Johnnie to Time Sliced hell, he is locked for a lifetime in the AGSM building, a whole life passes in 40 minutes – 6.20 – 7.00pm – he has to be found.

WALK THROUGH

All 25 participants (ABC TV professionals) got an sms 2 days before – “You receive a text message – from another dimension, someone is lost in a another time frame, they want you to save them”

“I’m lost in time, there is a window on Sunday when you can save me. You will need this code – REDITV”

others get REDFORM, REDATS and RED.COM (and various other colour combinations). At the appropriate call to action time (Sunday afternooon at 5.30pm) the participants work out what group they are in by colour and that they need to go to [www.itvformats.com].

Each team is provided with a dedicated computer.

On the website there is a tiny hidden roll over link ‘help me’. This links to a tick on screen help text…

Great you found the link, you figured it out! Thankyou, thankyou, thankyou! I am stuck in a pocket of time, living life at 1000 times your speed, I am sending this message one letter for every day of my time – and I will die at EST 19.00 on 04/12/2005. You’ve made it here so you definitely are the one(s) that can free me from this time dimension I’m caught in. I don’t have the time (ha!) to tell you all the details, but what I can say is that my name is Johnnie and I used to be the webmaster of this website. I found out about a time-slicer device one day when I was searching through the archives (read the pdf hidden on this page) and…well…ended up lost in time. I’ll tell you how that happened if you save me! To be freed I need the time-slicer device to reverse the process. You need to enter a special code to do this. I cannot trust anyone on the web with this code so I’ve hidden them around a venue in NSW Australia: The Australian Graduate School of Management. I’ve also created Bob the Bot to issue you with the code. But that comes later. Right now I need you to go to the venue (I hope you’re already there!) and find the paper clues I’ve left in some of the rooms. Since time is running out I need you to go in your teams and find the next clue. I’ve indicated the rooms on a map that is also hidden on this page. Find it now! I’m aging fast!”

3 – After the message there was both a back story PDF and a map “the map is here link”.

4 – The map showed each team where to get a clue. This clue had a code that opened the ‘time slicer

5 – Returning to the site they clicked again on the hidden ‘time slicer’ link – top left. The red team were given BSG for their entry code. This revealed the final panel – which we then put on the screen in the main room

6 – Teams then looked for a hidden telephone number in a picture we printed – the phone number was down the side of a building in a night shot of sydney, very hidden (but all teams got it)

7 – On the other end of the phone was a bot (Christy!) who gave each team (dependent on their colour) a letter. 8 – Each team returned to the main room and began entering their letters in the console…all teams needed to get their final letter before the console would reveal the final whereabouts of Johnnie caught in time. You can enter in the word ‘ alive’ into the panel

9 – This revealed a location – the toilet next to the bar. All teams then ran off to look for the protagonist. 10 – End…

Although the backbone of this was the website – it provided some control, puzzle game play and continuity. As the key elements of hidden links, codewords, hidden locations etc: became a simple methodology for the teams to follow…