In early 2010 I published Quick Response, a hands-on introduction into the realm of QR code applications. People have to “read” this book by taking photos of each page using a cameraphone. The phone’s QR code reader will then decode the abstract images to reveal that each image is an encoded URL for a photograph hosted on Flickr. The series of photos demonstrates the variety of modern commercial, artistic and subversive QR code applications. In addition, the book demonstrates a new way of appropriating other people’s photographs.
The series Nine Errors was made when Breda Photo Festival invited me to participate in their exhibition Another Street View in September 2010.
Photographs were presented as an online exhibition that was accessible via smartphone. Stickers with QR codes refering to the exhibits were spread around the city of Breda. So the exhibition existed only on the displays of smartphones in the streets of Breda. Instead of providing the expected images for an exhibition in public space that would be accessible exclusively for the owners of smartphones and that would support the idea of turning public space into a machine-readable surface, I decided to subvert the system by introducing (images of) a series of errors.
In the following years I continued pasting my stickers refering to error messages over existing QR codes in various cities.
A catalogue is available in the series of white books.
^ Breda 2010
^ Berlin 2011
^ Bordeaux 2011
^ Salzburg 2011
^ Berlin 2011
^ Paris 2013
2011–2013 in Amsterdam, Bamberg, Barcelona, Bayonne, Berlin, Bilbao, Bordeaux, Breda, Brussels, Cologne, Erlangen, Frankfurt, Hamburg, Kassel, Lausanne, Lisbon, Łódź, London, Mannheim, Marseille, Montpellier, Mulhouse, Naples, New York, Nice, Palermo, Paris, Pau, Rome, Rotterdam, Salzburg, Stockholm, Stuttgart, Utrecht, Venice, Zurich.