Gallery night adventure

In Malmö there's a night once a year which is called 'Gallery night', in which a lot of Malmö's galleries open their doors from six o'clock at night until midnight and sometimes later. It's a special night where the town is filled with people wandering, cycling, bussing and driving from gallery to gallery. Recently the whole night has escalated and attracted lots of fringe events which take advantage of the influx of open-minded and slightly tipsy culture tourists. I really hope the night turns into a huge cultural festival like the Edinburgh festival I'm used to.

I had an idea that I could take advantage of this night and try some 'guerrilla marketing' by sticking the above qr-code in subtle places around town. If you have a smartphone and scan the code, you get a link to my blog. A simple idea, I thought. The first stage of buying the stickers was also my premiere of shopping with pram and sleeping 4-week old son which went well thanks to an understanding employee at the stationery shop. Printing the stickers was tricky since he was waking up and didn't like to be left alone for two seconds, but I managed and met my wife later. I put the stickers in an envelope and put it in the basket under the pram. When we got home the envelope was gone. I was dissapointed but was beginning to realise that I probably would never have time to run around town sticking codes all over the place. So I gave up and wondered where my envelope had gone.

So you can imagine how surprised I was when a week later I received an email:

"...On Saturday night, 24th September, wandering towards the train after having visited Malmö's gallery night 2011, I pick up a piece of paper from the street. I didn't see that the prints on the sticker paper are called QR-codes directly, but I could see that it was a message of some sort. My girlfriend, who had been at one of the nights' installations, wasn't surprised that I picked up things from the street. Quite the opposite.
We looked at the print in the dark and it took a while before we saw the pixly code. The frame gave an oriental feeling which made the pattern look at first like hieroglyphics, sanskrit or some other foreign language. In the light from a streetlamp I saw that it was a kind of offer. An invitation to an underground club I guessed. Or yet another app to be downloaded. Perhaps with a built-in virus - for the mobile or for the brain of the idiot that dares to download it.
I don't have a smartphone, so I consulted my oldest son, who unfortunately didn't know anything about the code. After asking lots of students at the school I work at, I got some help. A girl had the app-app. She scanned the picture and I got the address to your blog.
I have now looked at some of the pictures you present. A walkthrough in a windmill too. The explanation you make in one of your posts emphasises the experience. I like you art..."


Dag Persson.

I thanked Dag very much for his tale and have had a look round the site for his small publishing house http://www.fripress.se/ I particularly like "Haiku-SMS" :)