Encoded

The exhibition was unsanctioned. Anything that read as a production setup (a rig, lighting, a tripod) would have ended the project on the first day. A phone in a gallery is invisible. The entire capture pipeline was designed around what one person can do while looking like an ordinary visitor.

TradeoffScan quality was hostage to gallery lighting and to how long I could circle an object without drawing attention. Several pieces took four or five attempts, and a few in the darker rooms never reached a mesh I was willing to ship.

The overlays had to sit registered to the actual artwork, inside a building where GPS is useless and where you cannot attach a marker to a wall. Visual positioning localises against the space itself, which was the only method that left no physical trace in a place we had no permission to alter.

TradeoffIt made the work dependent on a third-party localisation service and on visitors carrying a compatible device. Where the VPS map was thin the content drifted, and there is no graceful degradation: it either localises or it does not.

The reflex in AR is to prove the technology. Here the technology was a delivery mechanism for someone else's reading of a museum object, and any effect that pulled attention toward the rendering pulled it away from the argument. Transitions are slow, there are no particles, and nothing floats that does not need to.

TradeoffIt reads as less impressive in a thirty-second clip. The work is legible in the room and undersells itself in a reel, which is a real cost for a project whose reach depends on travelling as video.