Historicizing Public Space with QR-Codes

Datum: 2014-01-16
Tid: 09.00
Evenemanget vänder sig till: studenter - allmänheten - anställda

HUMlab and the Department of Culture and Media Studies Presents Four Augmented Information Installations:
‘Historicizing Public Space’

Throughout the Fall Term 20013/14 four groups of museum studies students have been working in HUMlab on projects that utilize traditional research, web design, digital authorship, writing for the web, film, audio and image production, urban design and museum studies.

Their assignment was to locate a publicly accessible space in Umeå, research an important event or history that is associated with that space and create an account of it that users can access on site, using QR-Codes (Quick Response Codes) from mobile digital devices (smart phones, tablets, iPods).
This Thursday 16 January 2014 at 09:00 in Ålidhem Centrum a tour of the four QR-Code installation sites will begin. First up is a history of Ålidhem as a site of conflict and drama; the development of the ‘Million Homes Project’ in the 1970s in the area involved environmental conflict. This is the starting point for an interesting journey through Ålidhem.

Next up is the SF Bio Filmstaden in central Umeå, where an account of the long history of cinema in Umeå will be presented with QR-codes, which includes videos of what cinema means to people today. This is followed by an installation on Rådhustorget that deals with the recent events around the manifestation by the neo-Nazi organization the Svenska motståndsrörelsen (Swedish Resistance Movement) and changes to the central plan of Umeå from a democratic perspective.

Finally the history of the Umeå cathedral is mediated on site by QR-Codes, with a particular focus on the history of feminist, transgendered and queer issues in relation to Swedish Church.

Anyone interested in the design of digital information and interaction in public space, along with historians, digital humanists, and media studies are welcome to attend this assessment demonstration in a respectful and cooperative way.

Contact person: James Barrett

Assessment of QR-Code Project for Museum Studies

Students organized themselves into four groups.

Group 1 – Ålidhem

Group 2 – SMR (svenska motståndsrörelsen) Anti/Manifestation and Apberget

Group 3 – SF Bio and Bio Historia I Umeå

Group 4 – Stadskyrkan

The groups were assigned tasks:

1.      Select a publically accessible place in Umeå that has historical or narrative associations that could be translated into a museum project and mediated by QR-codes and online content, which the users experience in real time and on-site.

2.      Organize a working group (2-5 people) around the subject; create a project plan and synopsis, delegate tasks, create a timeline for production, research the subject and organize materials, design the experience of the visitor to the site according to the space, place, history and narrative mediated by digital materials and the QR-code.

3.      Produce digital materials for the online component of the project. These could be text, image, video and audio. Skills involved in the production of digital materials include writing text, image editing (Photoshop), audio production (Audacity), video production (Adobe Premiere) and web composition and HTML coding (Wordpress).

4.      Implement the QR-Code project on site and show it relates to the topic and brings users into the experience of that knowledge.

The students were introduced to ‘Place’ as a critical concept and how digital media contributes to it as an information system from specific examples. Based on this conception of place, the QR-code project takes up how they can professionally add a layer of information to a place.

The first practical goal of the course was to plan and visualize a digital project of the type that the students are undertaking. They began with composing a short statement of intent, regarding what it is they wished to achieve in the project. The students were then introduced to the aspects of the project they must consider in their planning:

1.      The site: (includes considerations around public and private space, management of the site, the conditions the site imposes upon visitors, the site as a space and how it is interacted with, connectivity and access)

2.      The subject: (is this a historical subject, a critical project, is there information available, what does the subject represent in broader contexts- examples can include community, critical approaches, and how does the subject relate back to the course materials and teaching).

3.      The media: What forms of media will the group being employing in the project? How will they be integrated into the site and the subject? Do people in the group have experience that is relevant to the project?

4.      The goals: the successful integration of information and place that is interactive and interesting and successful group work as cooperation, planning, delegation, documentation and results.

These points resulted in a visualization of the project by each group. This was done as simple sketch-ups on paper (e.g. diagrams, charts or actual maps). This developed into the plan for the project.

Blogging for students followed two approaches, a) Process and b) Presentation. The process was documented in the blog as the students moved towards presenting the blogs as the destination for the QR-code links. The blogs must be part of the ongoing work. The presentation was the final status of the blogs for the users of the QR-codes on site.

The examination task was a completed QR-code based site that deals with the 'museumification' of a public space by introducing a designed layer of information to the site via digital media. The criteria for our examining these projects as passed is: 

1.      Successful integration of information and place that is interactive and interesting

2.      Successful group work as cooperation, planning, delegation, documentation and results.

3.      Demonstration of technical skills in the use of digital production and publishing tools.

4.      Demonstration of critical concepts by the design, production and interaction within the QR-Code Project.

5.      Successful user interaction with the QR-Code project on site.

Online Materials for QR-Code Projects

http://student.humlab.umu.se/ello0006/

http://student.humlab.umu.se/jepa0031/

http://student.humlab.umu.se/joma0191/

http://olivituss.wordpress.com/

 

Historicizing Public Space with QR-Codes

Historicizing Public Space with QR Codes from Jim Barrett

In the fall term of 2012-13 a group of museum studies students at Umeå University in Sweden were challenged as part of their course to make a museum installation in a public space using Quick Response (QR) Codes.

This is a short photo-essay of the results.  

Place and QR codes

Place and QR codes from Jim Barrett

"It is my assessment that this new model of cultural production results in approaching exhibitions as a process—that is an ongoing conversation with the public. Nevertheless, while the action may be with art spaces and non-profit galleries, these places have to make sure that they also stay relevant because the action does not necessarily stay with them: it moves anywhere due to the possibilities offered by the new state of globalization supported by networked culture". - When the Action Leaves the Museum: New Approaches to the Exhibition as a Tool of Communication by Eduardo Navas 

The Internet of Things Mediated by QR Codes

The Internet of Things Mediated by QR Codes on Prezi

A QR (Quick Response) code is two-dimensional visual structure that can be registered with a digital camera in a portable device. Whereas a linear bar code may accommodate 128 characters; a 2D QR Code, can comprise as many as 7,089 characters. QR code reader apps are available for the iPhone, the Android, and through service providers such as Sprint. QR codes can be scanned from even low-resolution computer screens, online videos (including YouTube), stickers and printed-paper. QR codes have been used to link to stored content not available on the Internet as well as lead the user to a specific website, special offer or otherwise unavailable multimedia content. Louis Vuitton has used QR codes in product design, and Teradadesign and Qosmo's N Building in Dubai allows users to read the building by accessing GIS-positioned Twitter entries from customers, make reservations and download coupons.

Qosmo's N Building in Dubai
The recent production by Cirque du Soleil of ‘Love’, a tribute to the music of The Beatles, features an iTunes app that is accompanied by a QR code for the 5th anniversary of the production. The user could unlock extra content within the app that includes music, video and still images of the show. The QR code also allows the user to enter a competition to win DVDs and music. Overall, the use of QR codes in publication and publicity has assisted in the expansion of multimedia and cross-platform content. The logical extension of the use of QR codes is as an added dimension to print publications, particularly in relation to subjects dealing with digital and multimedia production. In any use of QR codes there are three rules to observe:

1) Mobilize the landing page: the site the QR decodes to should be active and even live, with regular updates and a community aspect to it. If the QR Code you have made resolves to a url make sure the page is optimized for display on a mobile device. An easy way round this issue it to make sure the landing page is equipped with agent switching. If the site is not under your control then you can use Google’s mobilizer by adding the url to this string: http://www.google.com/gwt/n?u= If you are mobilizing your own site such as your blog then there is an even better option which will mobilize your site, generate a QR Code for the mobilized url and keep usage statistics, it’s called Delivr. Another possibility to consider is Mippin, which has an option to include advertising but you must have an RSS feed for it to work. Whatever you end up doing make sure the user of your QR Code sees content optimized for mobile devices because 99.9% of the time they will be using a camera phone.

2) The second rule of QR Codes is to make sure the url is as short as possible. Many mobile devices and reader software have difficulty with a QR Code matrix greater than 33×33 and some even falter with those dimensions. This means you should aim for a small matrix rather than a large matrix. In QR Code encoding the number of bytes at a given Error Correction Level (ECL) will determine the matrix size (see chart below) therefore a shorter url can mean a dimensionally smaller matrix. Dependence upon a third-party to decode and direct traffic is dangerous. The content, decoding and url/server provision should be handled by the publisher under contract or within the domain of the publication itself.

3) The third rule of QR Codes is, if the QR Code you have made resolves to a url, the online content must add tangible and significant value to any offline content. In terms of promotion added tangible and significant value includes prizes, limited access materials (special remixes or editions of recordings, limited edition T-shirts and so on) or discounts or coupons.

The method of delivery in relation to QR codes must be carefully considered. Malicious QR codes combined with a permissive reader can put a computer's contents and user's privacy at risk. Dependence upon a third-party to decode and direct traffic is dangerous. The content, decoding and url/server provision should be handled by the publisher under contract or within the domain of the publication itself. They are easily created and may be affixed over legitimate QR codes. On a smartphone, the reader's many permissions may allow use of the camera, full Internet access, read/write contact data, GPS, browser history, read/write local storage, and global system changes. Risks include linking to dangerous websites with browser exploits, enabling the microphone/camera/GPS and then streaming those feeds to a remote server, analysis of sensitive data (passwords, files, contacts, transactions), and sending email/SMS/IM messages or DDOS packets as part of a botnet, corrupting privacy settings, stealing identity, and even containing malicious logic themselves such as JavaScript, or a virus. These actions may occur in the background while the user only sees the reader opening a seemingly harmless webpage. Intricate, artist-created QR codes that are part of larger posters, or online in spcific websites are ways of lessening the risks for hacking with QR codes.