QUICK RESPONSE
Breaking the code Keen-eyed observers will spot a number of black and white square barcodes amidst the shop signs and fly posting that decorate Glasgow and Edinburgh’s streets. But what is their purpose? Rachael Cloughton explains
T he first one I saw was stuck to the concrete walls of a car park at Ocean Terminal: its ambiguous sequence of lines revealed nothing of its purpose and demanded little attention. A few days later I noticed another one at a different site. The minimal series of black and white squares lacquered to a lamppost contrasted with the fluorescent lime letters of the shop sign behind it. This time it held my attention. After running the image through the scanning application on my iPhone the words ‘a green ASDA sign is the only sign of life amongst grayness’ surfaced on the screen and the purpose of these enigmatic squares finally became clear.
Each code is part of an ongoing public art project by the Edinburgh-based artist Thomas Carlile. Entitled Landscapes of Memory the work is inspired by Guy Debord’s concept of dérive, or ‘drift’, which re-evaluates the urban environment as space rather than a series of architectural styles. Both personal and highly technical, these ‘quick response codes’ and the information they contain relate to a series of directionless journeys travelled by Carlile since May 2010. Scanning each code through an