The term QR code stands for a “Quick Response code: a code consisting of a pattern of black and white squares which can be read by a mobile device or computer. QR codes are used to provide further information about something” (Macmillan Dictionary, 2009)

Taking this definition further we started stripping our idea down to the basics by starting to create a working title for our piece. We decided that the elements of the site we wanted to focus on as part of our performance was the commercialisation  of the urban space and the people that use the site and the present day usage of the site, as a retail strip.

Ideas such as Quiet Reflection and Quantifying Reality came in to discussion in order to spark ideas of breaking the flow of the busy street in order to make people reflect on their own habits towards spending money and the monetary value we place on our lives.
However, we began to narrow our title further and decided upon Questioning Retail a much more specific title for us to work from. Moving away from the theme of pervasive media, we started designing other aspects of our performance. As we wanted to have a great impact on the high street for our performance we decided it would be a durational performance (lasting longer than 3 hours) and so we listed words that we associated with the high street such as busy, repetitive, cattle, ignorance, money and dehumanised. This made us very aware of how we were viewing the high street but also what we wanted to develop further within our development process. For example the idea of viewing the visitors to the high street as cattle really made us open our eyes to how other people perceive the high street. A retail space is usually advertised as a positive one and yet there are numerous cases of money being lost or wasted on material things whilst people are herded along the street through the crowds. These negative experiences we witnessed from standing in the space and viewing the people as cattle, made us ‘question retail’ ourselves.

Macmillan Dictionary (2009) QR Codes. [online] Available from: http://www.macmillandictionary.com/dictionary/british/qr-code [Accessed on 8th March 2015]