Encapsulation

Originally created for the TINY: Attention, Exploded show, I physically constrained the contents of one of my typically giant QR codes by rendering its rows of black and white modules linearly along 25 feet of S-VHS video tape contained in a S-VHS-Compact cassette.

The tape can be completely unwound and laid out zig-zag-wise to scan the code.

The label on the cassette has a typical-size, hand-rendered version of the same QR code, which, when scanned, plays an audio/video interpretation of the linearly arranged QR code modules, which you could say is an alternate decoding of the barcode, and could be like what you might see and hear if you actually played this physically altered video tape.

I chose to sacrifice a tape I kept from college that was just a bunch of random video noise I recorded back then. While shooting that video noise I had had music playing. I used the video imagery (as seen through the viewfinder of my old camera, which surprisingly still works) and the music from the actual section of tape that I physically manipulated. I then altered the audio and video to reflect the linearized QR code modules on the tape, so the picture and sound change to represent the black or white sections of tape. The video is 3:25 in length, which is how long it takes to “play back” the linearized QR code.

The piece has become a time capsule, including 20 years of my life of encoding/decoding things, using technologies from then and now.