The story: for months, the search went on in cyberspace for “Millennium Park,” a mysterious virtual amusement park whose opening was set for the year 2000. This search, which was simultaneously a competition between Y2K optimists and prophets of global doom, reached its climax on December 31, 1999 in the networks of the Ars Electronica Center Linz. From here, searchers combed the entire Internet for hints and traces. Whoever was able to decode them the fastest would be the first to gain admission to “Millennium Park.”



In the Ars Electronica Center, an Internet observatory was installed, from which it was possible to follow the turn of the millennium in the Internet and to document unusual Web traffic patterns. The data served to help discover the whereabouts of Millennium Park, and were also sources for live ORF reportage.
Internet users were able to follow the event’s decisive phase by logging onto www.tnc.net beginning at 9:30 AM on December 31, 1999. Immediately following “Turn-of-the-Millennium Evening News” shows, ORF-TV switched to special “2000 Live” broadcasts featuring up-to-the-minute reports from the Ars Electronica Center.



“Millennium Park” is a cooperative production of TNC Network (Beusch/Cassani), the Ars Electronica Center and ORF.