Funky little codes

We're all accustomed to hyperlinks in digital documents — highlights give us the clue that we can click through to further reading.

But now the QR (quick response) code, which looks like a small pixelated square, has stepped out of the computer monitor and into life. If you find it on any object — a door, a wall, a T-shirt, a poster or magazine page — point your phone at it and surprising things may happen. The code itself is a bit like the wardrobe in CS Lewis's Narnia books — it opens onto new worlds. It provides a link between the physical and the virtual.

Last week Bitly, the url shortener for Twitter, launched a QR code-making function, and both Time Magazine and USA Today have a QR code on their covers that, when scanned, takes the reader to websites, iTunes or photo galleries. Roger Smolski, editor of 2d-code online magazine, tweeted last Friday about edible QR-waffles made with a QR code laser-etched into the batter.

He said entries to the Edible QR Competition included codes made from Cheddar biscuits, jelly and tomato paste and that a company is even offering ancestry portraits of your DNA translated into QR code and printed onto canvas.

To date most of the uses have been educational or promotional. Marketing departments at Gap, Clinique, Calvin Klein Jeans, Dom Pérignon, Fox TV's Glee, the film Inception, the Pet Shop Boys and Emily the Strange were all well ahead of the curve.

It is now possible to sell anything in the world without a shop front — just code the product to direct customers to a website where their credit card payment can be securely taken through Pay-Pal.

But it's the QR-Arts that are really interesting some people. Italian artist Fabrice de Nola has been using QRs to make artworks for several years, and this year DJ Spooky used the codes in an exhibition called The Nauru Ellegies in Melbourne, Australia.

A web comic called QR Comic is made up entirely of codes, including a short story by Isaac Asimov, which has been converted, yes, to code.

Anthony Dunne, head of Design Interactions at the Royal College of Art, recently told me about a futuristic coded world project, known as the Internet of Things.

The concept is a network of interconnected everyday objects, all coded and tagged. Though many will find this idea spooky, there's no denying that QR codes are making changes, and we don't yet know how far-reaching they will be.