May 27, 2010
you are here
Invented in 1994 and very popular in Japan for ages, QR codes* are increasingly being adopted in the UK by cultural institutions and corporate entities alike, signposting participants/consumers to additional ‘digital content’ accessed there and then on their mobile phone (typically a website or application providing further information).
QR codes were originally a tool devised for global logistics – the primary function of these markers is to reduce unique artifacts in ‘real space’ to mere place-holders for a meta-data doppleganger within a digital database.
I happen to think that QR Codes might be a rather useful thing, by the way, but I’m also interested in how such signs might be subverted or hi-jacked to tell alternative stories.
I thought that it might be interesting to use these codes (which are free of licence) and try to create an interesting poetic and conceptual feed-back loop for unsuspecting users:
Scanning the QR code below…
…takes you to a single page website (demo here.)
I made stickers ov the code…
…with the intention that these will be stuck over existing corporate and cultural portals wherever they may be found.
The stickers intefere with user-requests for more information and offer a re-direction service to the immediate ‘now’.
The reassuring ‘you are here’ red dot – typically a feature of tourist maps – is recontextualised as a kind of confounded statement; “but you are here?” “you don’t need anything else” “this is enough.”
I hope that the stickers can create some interesting temporary disruptions into otherwise smooth transitions away from our present moment.
You can download the template for those here: QRtemplatefinal.pdf
(use Matt White Waterproof Labels in laser printer.)
*QR CODES: Davey Smith wrote various posts about them/I’ve mentioned some uses of QR codes previously over here /and if you’re not at all sure what I’m talking about take a look at the the wikipedia entry /or take a look at a can of Pepsi!
