Yet Another QR Code Meets Art Story

We have recently written about painter and mobile designer Jose Torres and how he incorporates quick response codes in his art.  He paints intricate cityscapes on canvas and puts in QR codes to share stories behind his subjects.

Now, we have heard of another artist who uses QR codes in his art in an entirely different manner.

Venezuelan digital artist Pedro Morales dismembers quick response codes and assembles them using paper and cloth flowers, leather, feathers, raffia mesh, and even on pieces of plastic. He also blows up QR codes to different proportions, but to a size that a smartphone can still read and scan.

And if Jose Torres calls the codes in his paintings Ambient Media Portal or AMP, Morales calls the artistic expression that uses the QR code scanning, decoding and reading process to reveal content without sacrificing aesthetic engagement as “Mobile Tagging Art.”

Mobile Tagging Art gives artistic meaning to a fast growing technology that is normally focused on mobile internet. Morales says that finding a personal and intimate relation with digital media represents a form of passion for him.

Using this principle, technology acquires beauty through Morales’ art, which includes paintings, totems, digital embroideries, mobiles, and columns.

Morales further explains that Mobile Tagging Art uses artistic expressions that are based on interactive codes and the development of things that are printed in 3-D. And all of these utilize regular QR code technology.

Morales first started to embrace computers as a tool to expand his aesthetic and creative horizons in 1988. During this time, he transformed his pictorial orientation and set aside the use of traditional instruments like canvas, fabric, and pigments. He calls this the dematerialization of the pictorial image.

According to Morales, his art is not about adapting to new technologies, but about owning them and utilizing them to cater to his aesthetic interests and needs . He says he assumes technology to humanize it and that technological tools reproduce things that represent the purpose of his experimentations and that mark his identity and sensibility as artist.