Cracking on with the scavenger hunt, I had to address the 2 foremost practical challenges: the lack of time and current restrictions on physical activities. Therefore I would stage the hypothetical hunt, instead of running it live. The hunt consists of 3 puzzles and 4 layers, each puzzle leads to the following layer.
- LAYER I | A Governmental Letter
The letter follows the GOV.UK branding, under the name of the fictional HM Department of Alternative Reality (HMAR). The contents are borrowed from the pre-Raphaelite poet The Stolen Child by Yeats, calling ‘citizen’ to discover the ‘lost universe’. The letter itself serves as a puzzle, solving which will lead to the next layer of the hunt.
In past versions I placed the unlisted YouTube video hides in the QR code, while the poem was more of a narrative and entertainment. Then I decided to actually make use of the text and embed the puzzle within. Instead of chiselling out letters which would form the URL, I blocked them to deliver a stronger visual message that calls participants to uncover a hidden message.
The QR code then becomes an Easter Egg, that leads to an online bibliography that lays out all references used in this hunt, while giving away the intention of the HMAR. I added this part as some sort of handholding and guidance through this elusive hunt, whether it serves as a helper or spoiler is still subject of debate. Rapid digitalisation these years transformed QR codes from a elusive cryptic runic visual language to a symbol of immediate access to information. I can go on and on about the intriguing visual nature of QR code and the downfall of such, but it is better to dedicate another project to it.
Later in the final crit, my fellow practioners and I agree that more work could be done on the letter to improve its fidelity: include full addresses and websites to mirror a complete governmental letter, as well as designing the envelope, in order to make the experience more immersive.
2. LAYER II | The Moving Collage titled The Message
Developed from the couple of recorded browsing experiences of GOV.UK, this video aims to guide participants through an otherworldly experience of the site (and a broader cyber realm) while they hunt for clues. Seemingly nonsensical in terms of narrative, principles that guided my decision making were:
- being visually stimulating,
- being ominous, hinting for concealed informations, and
- surreal
I dubbed the moving image with the magnificent choral arrangement of Which was the Son of, a sacred piece composed by Arvo Part and performed by the Tallis Scholars. The composition is the lineage of Jesus traced back to the Hebrew God, which I see as an intriguing juxtaposition of a massive and important consititution.
The other significance of this choral piece its lyrics – that the biblical text is usually skipped by modern readers, which connects with the nature of webpages’ source codes – important but intentionally unseen.
The clue for the next layer is displayed halfway through the sequence. In the crit it is discussed whether to make clue more scattered than it is now.
However I would like to conserve this ceremonial structure. To prevent the clue from being too easily accessed, I plan to find a video host that could allow me to disable all progress controlling features (play/pause button, progress bar, etc.).
3. LAYER III | Poster with Tear-off Flyers
The 3rd layer is a physical object, designed to highlight how cyber authority penetrates the physical world.
In the previous puzzle the geographic coordinates point to the Granary Building, the following haiku lines indicates a deep oceanic trench. This indicate the deepest accessible point of the building, where the poster is displayed, waiting for fast participants to take away limited copies of clues.
I also decided to encrypt the clue URL with Caesar Cipher (see explanation below), nudged by the S.P.Q.R. spoofing of the HM Crown. This also points to the fictional narrative of this hunt: HMAR’s effort to overthrow the current constitution and restore a Roman Republic style utopia.
4. Layer IV / The Final Layer | ‘Aleph’
Aleph is the short story by Jorge Luis de Borges about a miniature universe in a desolate basement, I decided to make the final layer of this hunt, into a copy of the story’s climax paragraph, therefore ‘the lost universe’ that the HMAR summoned the citizens to uncover in the first place. The paragraph – a detailed but non-exhaustive description of the contents of the universe – is spoofed to be more familiar to a British audience.
The visual is borrowed from webpage source codes, to trick one into believing it as illegible contents. It turns out to not only be legible, but intriguing and profound.