Encoded Reality

We are exploring techniques to integrate digital codes into physical objects. Spanning both the hard and the soft, this work entails incorporating texture patterns into the surfaces of objects in a coded manner. Leveraging advancements in rapid prototyping and manufacturing capabilities, techniques for creating deterministic encoded surface textures are explored. The goal of such work is to take steps towards a self-descriptive universe in which all objects contain within their physical structure hooks to information about how they can be used, how they can be fixed, what they're used for, who uses them, etc. Our motivation is to transform opaque technologies into things that teach and expose information about themselves through the sensing technologies we already, or foreseeably could, carry on us.