One of my favorite artists, Know Hope, made it on Wooster Collective today for his video interview with Zach Nielson. Check out the video below. The audio quality isn’t great at parts, but the video is worth watching for the images alone, and what can be heard properly is just a bonus insight into Know Hope’s work. For more on Know Hope, check out the interview I recently did with him.
Looks like Invader has been raising the bar lately with pieces made of QR code. If you haven’t seen it yet, watch JetSetGraffiti’s video interview with Invader below.
But what are QR codes?
The amazingness that is Wikipedia has a great article on the codes and their history.
Although initially used for tracking parts in vehicle manufacturing, QR Codes are now used in a much broader context, including both commercial tracking applications and convenience-oriented applications aimed at mobile phone users (known as mobile tagging). QR Codes storing addresses and URLs may appear in magazines, on signs, buses, business cards or just about any object that users might need information about. Users with a camera phone equipped with the correct reader software can scan the image of the QR Code causing the phone’s browser to launch and redirect to the programmed URL. This act of linking from physical world objects is known as a hardlink or physical world hyperlinks. Users can also generate and print their own QR Code for others to scan and use by visiting one of several free QR Code generating sites.
As Invader mentions in the video, you can read QR codes from your iPhone. 2D Sense (formally known as iMatrix, the software Invader mentions) is free to download, but I couldn’t get it to work.
As cool as these QR codes are though, this “hardlink” technique experimented with before to little success. Unlike Invader’s usual mosaics, these QR codes are more of a secret invasion that won’t be understood by the average viewer. I think most people will prefer the normal mosaics.
Here’s a QR code I made online. Maybe you’ll have more luck decoding it than I’ve had:
Current.tv has done a video about Shepard Fairey’s Obama images which includes a pretty cool interview with Shepard Fairey himself talking about the project.
I think this series of images has become a lot of people have realized. Today I saw a friend of mine, who would never normally wear something by the OBEY brand, wearing a t-shirt with the Progress image on it.