the new media

after being hit by an inspiration particle after trying to come up with something clever on the theme of "poetry in unexpected places", and having sounded the idea off people i'm close to, i have come up with an idea that may very well change the way we interact with our world; an idea to breach the fictitious gap between cyberspace and meatspace.

PART 1 - GRAFFITI
the first part is cheap to do and astoundingly simple. instead of spraying "killroy was here", or even something fantastically artistic but physical, it is now possible to cheaply and easily print and place a QR code that represents whatever message or links to whatever static / dynamic artwork one wishes to display.

this becomes interesting when the text or linked item in question is strongly connected with the location of the QR code. for instance, imagine walking through a park and spotting a QR code on a bench. when you pass your scanner over the code, an apparition appears on the bench (viewed from the perspective of the camera facing the sticker) and adds a ghostly narrative to your experience of the park.
or, upon pointing your camera at a code on a street corner, you're treated to a band playing a song on that very same corner.

PART 2 - AUGMENTED REALITY
this takes the previous idea one level further, and requires cellphone applications that superimpose data from a QR code over the camera display. this could be anything from seeing objects that aren't there - similar to the idea in part 1 only viewable from any angle - to reconstructing the objects that are.

for example, if i'm wearing a QR code on the back of my t-shirt and it links to a skin of an alien monster, the application could display the skin instead of me and match its movements to mine.

BOTH ARE LIMITLESS
the interactivity made possible in either phase is bounded only by the imagination of the artist. a QR code can link to a puzzle that must be solved in order to find the next QR code. or it can be used to correspond with the previous / next viewers of the QR code. the target site of the code can be updated to reflect changes in the time, the weather, the political situation, the number of people who have already viewed the content, and so on...

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imagine a world where you can take in a good play, or catch up with your favourite "television" show just by following codes through the cityscape. i just did, and it sounds really, really good to me!