Image & title recycled from Derek Lerner’s blog post
Lerner’s most recent art work involves a publicly installed QR code mounted on aluminum and attached to a street sign. The curious user scans the QR using their mobile device and hears an evolving soundscape comprised of environmental noise from that location and additional content sourced from previous callers. The current “viewer/caller/user” is then prompted to make their own sound byte to be included in the composition.
Taking a QR code out of it’s generalized commercial context defies expectation, brings the curious user back to a more fundamental awareness of simple interaction and interbeing. It provides a control variable in the experiment that is the evolution of communication, pointing out to us how conditioned our expectations of our environment have become. The sourced soundscape component enlists the user in the creation of the art and becomes an archive of time and place. Dig!
Read Derek Lerner’s statement here