Enhanced Reality and Grave Markers
MAY 23, 2011 TAGS:
This weekend our friends over at deathreferencedesk.org wrote about a new development in "value-added" tombstones, grave markers that through mobile phones or other electronic devices supplement information on the grave stone with images, videos, web sites, you name it.
These tombstones, originally written about in the Twin City's Pioneer Press, feature a QR code at the bottom of the marker. You may have seen QR (quick response) codes on street ads, in print magazines or on posters. They are designed to offer those equipped with internet accessible camera phones the ability to instantly navigate to a web page that might offer multimedia or interactive content.
QRs are essentially visual URLs. And their emergence in the field of advertising and public signage marks a step forward in experts call "enhanced reality." The digital world of information, which is so vast and deep, can interact with the physical and visual world we walk around in.
A tombstone, which is both a repository of information and public sign seems a natural fit for this type of enhancement. Other ideas around transforming the tombstone have included grave markers outfitted with video screens or even with small range electronic broadcasting capabilities. But a simple conduit to content online like a QR seems easiest.
With the proliferation of online memorials and sites where gigabytes of information about a person's life can be stored, a QR tombstone is a natural fit.
Now, if information designers could only figure out a way to make QRs look a little less like a shipping bar code, these thing might catch on.
These tombstones, originally written about in the Twin City's Pioneer Press, feature a QR code at the bottom of the marker. You may have seen QR (quick response) codes on street ads, in print magazines or on posters. They are designed to offer those equipped with internet accessible camera phones the ability to instantly navigate to a web page that might offer multimedia or interactive content.QRs are essentially visual URLs. And their emergence in the field of advertising and public signage marks a step forward in experts call "enhanced reality." The digital world of information, which is so vast and deep, can interact with the physical and visual world we walk around in.
A tombstone, which is both a repository of information and public sign seems a natural fit for this type of enhancement. Other ideas around transforming the tombstone have included grave markers outfitted with video screens or even with small range electronic broadcasting capabilities. But a simple conduit to content online like a QR seems easiest.
With the proliferation of online memorials and sites where gigabytes of information about a person's life can be stored, a QR tombstone is a natural fit.
Now, if information designers could only figure out a way to make QRs look a little less like a shipping bar code, these thing might catch on.
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