A future era seems to have found a trace of a damaged highway sign. QR codes and CAPTCHAS have replaced the classical typographic indications we know today.

In a period of conflicting transitions to automation, this sign was probably mounted over roads, serving both autonomous cars and human-driven vehicles.

While QR codes can only be read by autonomous cars, CAPTCHAS, designed as a means of resisting technological domination, were for a long time recognisable only by human intelligence, but recently by artificial intelligence too. In response, protection measures are evolving as the technology develops, the latest being reCAPTCHA v3, which gives a score based on the user's behaviour.

Unlike the materials (rare and exhaustible metals) used to manufacture consumer technology, accelerating the obsolescence of our everyday digital storage devices, the solidity and durability of this signal panel become a way to preserve and transmit our web imagery to a future generation.

Hyperhighway's CAPTCHAS conceal a meaning that visitors are invited to decipher, while the QR code can be scanned to discover online content.

The work is a result of our research series: Obsology