The Daily Render

A Digital Scrapbook for the Past, Present, and Future

Teki Latex dans un QR Code tee-shirt
|| 8/11/2009 || 12:06 pm || + Render A Comment || ||

Screen grab of Teki Latex in a QR-Code T-Shirt

Teki Latex in a QR Code Shirt

I came home very early Sunday morning from a long night out with friends and before I passed out I checked Facebook one last time. It’s a good thing I checked too. It just so happened that Parisian Rapper / Producer / Record Label Owner / DJ Teki Latex had just posted that he was doing a live DJ mix via webcam. I had recently signed up for a competing streaming video website and was curious about what were some of the pros & cons of the service he was using. So before nodding off, I decided to watch/listen to his mix. What I saw, however, was that he was wearing a t-shirt with a big QR Code on it. Over the last few years I’ve tried to document QR Codes that I randomly find, so I futilely tried to take a few screen grabs of the t-shirt, but was unable to get the full image that is needed to decode the message. It would have been the first time I’ve been able to decode a QR Code that was displayed over streaming video.

The next day I left a message on his Facebook page asking what it decoded to and he responded that it was “probably Grenoble.” I guess I’ll have to find a photo of him wearing the shirt again to find out for sure….

Below are a couple YouTube videos featuring Teki Latex:

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My Artomatic 2009 Opening Night Exhibit Dissected on Flickr
|| 6/3/2009 || 7:36 pm || + Render A Comment || ||

For my second official upload to Flickr, I continued last year’s practice, and uploaded a photo I took of my Artomatic 2009 exhibit on opening night. By adding notes over every part of the display photograph on Flickr, you can click on the embedded links and view the respective content on my website. If you are unable to make it to this year’s exhibition, I hope this dissection satiates your curiosity.

A dual purpose QR-Code added to the splash page
|| 11/10/2008 || 12:10 pm || Comments Off on A dual purpose QR-Code added to the splash page || ||

QR-Code superimposed over a zoom in of Good Hope Quilt #3

To this day, one of my favorite parts of this website is my splash page. By using the random image generator, there are well over thousands of different visual combinations that you might see when visiting this website’s splash page. Today I decided to add what consider to be a “meta” or dual purpose QR-Code to the splash page. The dual purpose aspect is that its both the HTML link and decoded QR-Code mean the exact same thing: https://nikolasschilller.com/blog/ – So if someone doesn’t read this entry, and decides to decode the QR-Code on the splash page, they’ll be given the same link that they’d receive if they simply clicked on the QR-Code. I could have made the QR-Code link to some random photograph hidden on this website saying “You’ve won a million dollars!!” —but I didn’t (okay I still might make another). Instead if someone takes a screen grab of the splash page that shows the QR-Code and then reposts the image somewhere else, the embedded link back to my website will still exist in the QR-Code.

Related QR-Code Entries:

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QR Code on display at the Ralph Lauren store in Georgetown
|| 9/5/2008 || 11:51 pm || Comments Off on QR Code on display at the Ralph Lauren store in Georgetown || ||

QR Code On Display at the Ralph Lauren store in Georgetown, DC

Tonight I went to the Adidas store in Georgetown because my friend DECOY was celebrating her birthday and another friend was DJing. After parking my bicycle down the street (Georgetown doesn’t have many bicycle locks), I noticed the sign outside of the Ralph Lauren store. This sighting marks the first time I’ve seen a QR Code in Washington, DC. I decided to snap a picture of it to see if I could decode on my computer and below the fold you can see the results:

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My Artomatic 2008 Opening Night Exhibit Dissected on Flickr
|| 5/27/2008 || 2:50 pm || Comments Off on My Artomatic 2008 Opening Night Exhibit Dissected on Flickr || ||

I’ve never been a fan of Flickr. I dislike how photos are lifted from Flickr all the time without proper citation. One of my biggest annoyances regarding my artwork or other people’s work is when it’s posted on-line with no link back or extra information regarding the artist or the circumstances regarding the image’s origin. Instead you get “neat huh?” “Cool photo!” “Look at this!” etc and while it’s great that more eyes are seeing the image, it undermines the artist’s visibility because the citation is not always accurately presented. A good example of this lack of information can be seen at the social image bookmarking website FFFFOUND!. This lack of citation is not the case 100% of the time, but its the main reason why I don’t upload my artwork to Flickr. Since I have ample server space and nearly unlimited bandwidth I’ve never needed another repository for my images.

I also don’t like the stalker ability that comes with having all of your photographs on-line for strangers to look at and download. I won’t name names, but I’ve looked through some Flickr photostreams of some of my friends and have found that the photos offer far too much information about their lives, activities, and friends. You can look through someone’s photos and see their exes, the interior of their homes, and basically just about anything the person decided to place out there for strangers to view. Worse is that you cannot access the information regarding where your photographs are viewed from. Since I have access to my website’s server logs I can find exactly how many times a photograph has been looked at and by what IP addresses. This information is shielded from the Flickr user and dumbed down to a lowly view counter.

With those reservations aside, I decided to play nice and upload one photograph of my Artomatic 2008 exhibit taken on May 9th. I went through and tagged the photograph twelve times showcasing the content that has been placed on top of the Base Map. Since I embedded quite a few links into the notes, I’ll be able to track exactly who clicks on the image and know with a certain amount of certainty how many times the photograph has been looked at and where the photograph is being looked at from– if they click.

Related Artomatic Entries:

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The Base Map Installation @ Artomatic
|| 5/5/2008 || 1:15 pm || Comments Off on The Base Map Installation @ Artomatic || ||

About a month ago when I was planning out my Artomatic exhibit I came up with the idea to do a time-lapse video as a means to promote & showcase my upcoming exhibit. My friend Brian Liu made a similar styled video and I thought it would be fun to make one that shows both the location of the exhibit and teases viewers into seeing the actual exhibit.

The process involved in making the video was rather straightforward. Back in mid-April I went through my collection of printed maps and picked out a few that I didn’t care for. Then I went to my nearby CVS and purchased about 6 more DC, Maryland, and Virginia maps. I cleared out my dining room and laid out all the maps to see if they would cover the 12′ x 8′ space that I am alloted at Artomatic and once I realized that I had enough maps I began to cut them into roughly 1′ x 2′ sections. After that I went to the hardware store and purchased some wheatpaste and a paint brush. Finally, I contacted my friend Robin who’s done similar videos before and bounced the idea off of him. He thought it was a decent concept and after a few minor delays on Friday, April 25th, 2008 we went to the Artomatic space and recorded the entire installation from start to finish. About a week later I got the raw video from him, last night I edited it in Final Cut Pro, and today I uploaded it to YouTube.

I chose to use the tune “The Dub and the Restless” by Sonic Boom because it’s been a favorite of mine for ages and I felt it captured the essence of the time-lapse video quite well. I have contacted the musician and hopefully he’ll continue to let me use the video without issue.

Tomorrow I am going to the Artomatic space and will be doing some touch-up work to the wall because after my last visit to the site I noticed some of the map’s have become unstuck and I need to make sure they are securely fixed to the wall. Later this week I will be going to the space and putting up my maps over “the base map.” I’ll probably need to get some extra lighting in place and after that it should be ready for Friday’s opening! I have a couple other ideas for the exhibit, but they’ll be shared here when the time comes.

If you are in the Washington, DC area this Friday, please stop by and say hello!

Looks like someone from NOMA gave the Artomatic organizers one crappy raster graphic to use— notice the pixilation on their logo!

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QR Code Tessellation
|| 4/23/2008 || 10:42 pm || Comments Off on QR Code Tessellation || ||

: rendered at 18,000 x 12,000 :

While the QR-Code mistake wasn’t exactly what I was hoping to create earlier today, this design turned out exactly as I originally envisioned. The plan was to take one QR Code and plot the code as a very large tessellation. Like the Geovisual QR Code, I wanted to make the embedded code something self-evident so I chose the text to be “QR Code Tessellation by Nikolas Schiller. Created on Wednesday April 23rd, 2008 in Washington, DC.”

For this design I rotated the code 45 degrees to create a diamond shape and after the rendering was finished I cut out 4 of the squares and added an enlarged QR Code in the lower right-hand corner. In all, it’s a very simple design but at the size of a billboard it would be very interesting to see it displayed.

: QR Code Decoded :

View the rest of the details:

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another QR Code mistake
|| || 12:24 pm || Comments Off on another QR Code mistake || ||

: rendered at 9,000 x 6,000 :

The other week I attempted to hack the QR-Code to see if I could visually embed a censored aerial photograph of the Washington Monument to create “Geovisual QR Code“. While I was unsuccessful, I enjoyed the process of experimenting with this type of visual code.

Today I tried to make a second QR Code design based off a QR Code tessellation. I was able to make the tessellation without a problem and when I was finished I saved the new QR Code as a GIF. When I imported the GIF into my rendering program I noticed that something was awry. Instead of being shown in black & white I was seeing bits of color. I assume that this happened because the program does not take GIF files well. This might have happened because I saved the GIF as an interlaced file and when the program was deconstructing the GIF it created some type of visual static. Instead of casting the mistake aside, I decided to see what the final result would be, and frankly sometimes even mistakes can look quite cool.

Up next will be the intended QR Code design.

: zoom to center :

View the rest of the details:

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Geovisual QR Code
|| 4/12/2008 || 5:42 pm || Comments Off on Geovisual QR Code || ||

: saved at 6,000 x 6,000 :
Geovisual QR Code by Nikolas Schiller

QR Code is a two-dimensional bar code created by Japanese corporation Denso-Wave in 1994. The “QR” is stands for “Quick Response,” and it operates very similar to traditional bar codes, but allows for more customization. QR Codes are common in Japan where they are currently the most popular type of two dimensional code. In recent weeks I’ve read about some very interesting uses of the code and decided to make something with it.

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Nikolas Schiller is a second-class American citizen living in America's last colony, Washington, DC. This blog is my on-line repository of what I have created or found on-line since May of 2004. If you have any questions or comments, please contact: