A recent interior fitout at Melbourne’s Monash College Bourke Street campus sees QR codes used on an interactive feature wall for students to scan with their phones.

The artwork was delivered by Melbourne artist Chris Clements who professes to working closely with the Monash team brief to transform the social spaces at the college.

The “QR” feature wall is interactive, meaning students with phones can walk along and scan the codes and be directed to websites. The codes are easily changed and will be updated by the university.

“The concepts for the pieces are based around multiculturalism and pedagogical discussions on inquiry based learning and technology,” says Clements.

“For the work QR, I consulted with the school and embedded QR codes within the work that linked them to websites, providing students with a platform to further inquiry on a range of subjects.”

“While the work refers to abstract painting,” Clements says, “it is really anything but abstract: it is made of definite digital code and sends student scanners of the patterns off to an array educational and sometimes surprising websites, sites of further inquiry.”

“In terms of design the work riffs off and exaggerates the vivid colouring and use of repetition throughout the building to create a focal point in the student social space,” he says,

< A QR Code directs scanners to an Indigenous map of Australia. Click to enlarge.

“The painted wall work provokes a physical, human scale encounter with the building blocks of code and extends the notion of the image as a ‘window to the world’ to a digital interface.

“The leaves of paper disrupt the uniformity of the blocks to generate light and movement across the room while also referring (almost comedically) to the students own paper chase.”

A second wall also received the Clements treatment this time a row of black, painted, and scaled up international power sockets line up like emoticon faces.

Images: courtesy of Matthew Stanton.

Nathan Johnson

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