Having spent a many hours making necklaces in binary over the past couple of week, I am becoming interested in encoding messages in everyday objects.
Can I knit a binary message? How can I sneak a message into a drawing? What words can I cipher into my meals? I want to add more layers of meaning to my daily life. And I want to see what other people can do, too, so I started a swap just for that over on Swap-Bot.
Secret Message Crafting
Do you like codes and ciphers? Puzzles? Secrets?
For this swap you will encipher a message and send it to your partner, along with the plaintext message sealed in a separate envelope. If your partner needs a tool, key, or hint to decode the message, please include that, too.
The Message
A friendly greeting, sage advice, favorite quote, a personal secret, or whatever you like. It should be long enough to decipher but not so long it will be tedious. A sentence or two? Maybe more, maybe less depending upon the medium.
The Code
Your choice! ROT-13, alphabetic substitution, QR code, Morse code, ASCII binary…there are many to choose from.
The Medium
Here is where the crafting comes in. No scribbling your coded message onto a sheet of paper and calling it done. Be creative in presenting your message. You might create coded embroidery, weaving, beading, or knitting. Maybe a painting or collage. Perhaps a jigsaw, acrostic or crossword puzzle.
Signups are until April 14th, so if you’d like to craft a message, send it off to a stranger and get a coded gift in exchange, then please come play at Swap-Bot
