If you find yourself at Meltdown Comics in Los Angeles over the next few weeks, keep an eye out for a QR code hidden in the store. Scanning the code will send you on the path to explore time/trip LA, a time travel themed multimedia experience that takes you through eight local shops in the Hollywood area. But act fast, the installment is wrapping up at the end of August.

By Jane Doh, originally posted at ARGNet

For the next few weeks, Los Angeles residents have a chance to do something many of us can only dream about: a little time traveling, courtesy of Superfreako Productions. Participants in time/trip LA are tasked with finding strategically placed QR codes located in 8 shops and stores around the Hollywood area, starting at Meltdown Comics on West Sunset Boulevard. The QR codes unlock a series of videos revolving around time travel. The time/trip LA experience follows Katie and Kelly as they travels through time and space that guides participants through short films keyed to each location.

As part of the experience, time/trippers can submit five pictures of themselves with the QR codes for a chance to win swag from some of the participating retailers. Spoiler-ridden details about the sweepstakes explain the rules and prizes, but players in the LA area are advised to get moving: the contest ends at 11:59pm on August 31.

It’s worth noting that time/trip LA is not Superfreako’s first foray into the crossmedia storytelling space. One of its earliest attempts is the Last Days Journal, a social media storytelling site for survivors of a zombie apocalypse that launched in 2007. While Last Days Journal was created to support a project that was never developed, the survivor site still “lives” on.

Between 2008-2009, Superfreako worked with Benji Schneider to create The Society for Linian Studies, an art project with alternate reality gaming elements including a live lecture event at the Velaslavasay Panorama and an exhibition of related artifacts at San Diego State University. Having followed along with The Society for Linian Studies, I was impressed with the high production value of the artifacts, acting, and other assets for the project. According to Chad Kukahiko, Creative Director of the superfreakos, “it was fun as hell working on a piece of art so ridiculously original.” The idea of dueling institutes that permeated the narrative, along with the characters and story elements surrounding the Linian Society, was the brainchild of his friend and former coworker Benji Schneider. For the The Society for Linian Studies, “the plan was to was continue to do mini-ARG installments perhaps 2 to 3 times a year,” but Schneider’s growing commitments to his band Lord Huron forced the team to modify the game’s plans.

The planning process for The Society for Linian Studies provided the inspiration for time/trip LA: not in terms of story world or plot, but in terms of techniques and technology. As Kukahiko explained to me: “The initial concept from which time/trip grew was a vague QR code wild posting dystopian-themed ARG off-shoot I was tooling around with in my head — something I was actually hoping to bring into the Linian Society fold.”

Even as overt location-based gaming like the recent import Shadow Cities social check-in services like Gowalla and Foursquare become more commonplace, most location-based games lack a certain style, narrative hook, or uniquely local relevance. It’s hard to consider these games as primarily artistic endeavors.

But that’s not the case with either The Society for Linian Studies or time/trip LA; both are carefully crafted as modest, intimate affairs. For time/trip LA, the short films add a compelling narrative layer to what is otherwise “just” a technology-enabled scavenger hunt: something that could be much more casual and even mainstream.

It’s precisely this hyperlocal and highly narrativized focus of Superfreako Productions that makes them worth watching, as the production company seems eager to make waves in the transmedia/ARG space and has certainly caught this blogger’s eye.