If you’ve ever had the pleasure of visiting San Diego’s Balboa Park, you’ll know what a beautiful place it is. With its Spanish-Renaissance architecture and landscaped gardens, you feel like you’ve truly stepped back into another time.

It seems like I’m not the only one who feels that way. The Balboa Park Online Collaborative (BPOC) recently launched an interactive cell phone game called Giskin Anomaly, to encourage visitors to fully explore the park’s historic treasures.

Guests can dial in to hear the adventures of two people who use a memory-sensing device (called the Giskin Anomaly Detector) to retrieve WWII-era recollections throughout the park.  

As part of the game’s launch, BPOC hosted a contest inviting artists to create a Steampunk-inspired model of what this fanciful device would look like.

San Diego-area artist John Hosford walked away with the grand prize. His intricate model, dubbed “Sir Tellabeem’s Tempress Mark II” took him over 80 hours to construct, involving cutting and dying the leather of the glove by hand.

Though there was only one grand-prize winner, the competition was fierce indeed. Check out the Flickr pool showcasing the winners, and the afternoon their costumed creators spent playing with the contraptions in the park.

A moment of full disclosure: I used to take karate classes with John and his siblings, back in the day. I knew he was a creative kid, so it’s great to see how his talent has blossomed over the years. Congrats on the win, John, and keep up the awesome work!

• Giskin Anomaly Detector Design Contest
• Giskin Anomaly Detector Contest Flickr Set
• Giskin Anomaly Game
• More Steampunk crafts on Geek Crafts
• The battle rages on: What will our Geek be named?
• See what’s at stake for the Name the Geek winner!