When you pay your groceries at the supermarket checkout, the thermal printer that prints the receipt is just something usual that would not particularly get your attention. But when you take this device out of the supermarket and use it to design a poster, it suddenly becomes un-usual. The gesture of re-contextualizing and the intervention into the software create a moment of defamiliarization that makes the technology visible, opens a critical gaze and makes the technology usable as a tool for designing something new. The usual becomes unusual. This also leads to the possibility to question everyday circumstances critically. What invisible power structures are embedded in technology, how can they be made visible? Can we understand re-contextualisation as a way to make technology more accessible?

With the online-publication »re-coding everyday technologies« we want to look at how the unusual and methods that subvert can be used for a more critical understanding of everyday digital technology and what the role of design could be to enable engagement with technology. As »re-coding« we understand acts of altering or reinterpreting digital technology e.g. through intervention in their codes, but also as a change in meaning or context – changing encodings, cultural codes or hidden structures.