I knew that working with mobile technologies was a writhing mess of conflicting systems, lack of standards and evil telcos, but nothing has prepared me for the utter utter frustration of trying to embed QR-codes into artworks and make them readable by more than one individual phone!

 The cheapie Nokia N70 that I got from ebay has a wide lattitude in terms of what it will recognise as a code, which I wrongly asumed was the way all phones work. Totally not the case - Orange are kindly providing 3 x Nokia 6300's and £250 credit per phone for the exhibition, opening in 2 days, but when we tested them on my artworks they didn't work!!! The do work on standard codes.... sometimes.... though no indication why they stop reading a code they read 5 min ago, but they don't have the same lattitude as the N70.

I don't like the mechanical structure of QR or data-matrix codes, so for the series RGB , I altered the codes to make them more organic and fluid. I was testing continually on the N70 to ensure that they still worked when I altered them... and they did. But the 6300 doesn't recognise them as QR codes. Both phones have 2 megapixel cameras, but the N70 has a much wider lens and it also seems to handle a wider variety of lighting conditions... But who knows perhaps its not the camera...  perhaps it is the operating system N70's are symbian, 6300's are Nokia's own OS, or perhaps it an issue with the telco software, my N70 is on Vodafone.

 The most frustrating thing is that there seems to be no one out there between dumb sales person who knows nothing and ultra geek who can't communicate, and I am finding it difficult to work out where a telephone OS ends and the telco software starts.... and ultimately I'm not a programmer, I only want to know so can work out where the boundaries are. I can't even seem to find this out. I emailed i-nigma who created the QR-code reader and they rather rudely have not replied. I can tell they really care about research and really pushing the boundaries of technology *pursed lip and narrowed - eyed angy glare at developer who did not reply to my email*

Ironicallly my whole reason for working with QR codes and print based artworks is to create artworks which, when the technology fails, or the electricity goes, still have some physical form which can be viewed in its own right. Yet when the technology goes right can create an enhanced experience of the artwork.... and now I seem to be falling bak on that default mode, where the technology has gone belly-up.