Austrian gravesites get digital twist

By Michael Shields

VIENNA, Oct 4 (Reuters) - The fabled Viennese fondness forfine funerals and "a schoene Leich" - a beautiful corpse - isabout to get a modern twist.

Digital technology is about to give Austrian gravestones thepotential to speak across time by showing pictures andbiographies of the people buried below.

All you need is a smartphone equipped with a scanner to readthe so-called "quick response" (QR) codes, the square ofsquiggles already widely used in advertising campaigns to unlocka trove of information for the curious.

The first QR codes will start appearing on graves in Austriawithin weeks, said Joerg Bauer, project leader for Austrianbereavement company Aspetos, who has been working on the QRproject for five years.

Bauer said cemetery visitors could even view videos ifconnection speeds were high enough, although he frowned on theprospect of disturbing others with loud music.

"Most mobile phones have a radio function that works onlywhen the earbuds are in. If we do it this way we don't disturbthe peace of the dead and people can still hear music by thegrave without disturbing those nearby," he said.

The codes - first developed in Japan to track car parts inthe 1990s - may eventually link music fans with the lives oflegendary composers like Beethoven and Mozart enshrined atVienna's central cemetery, he said, although local officials saythere are no immediate plans for this.

QR codes may have got their start in car manufacturing,advertising and marketing, but also lend themselves tosupporting grief-stricken families who want the memories ofloved ones to go on, he said.

"Every person can leave behind their traces, not just therich and famous. Everyone has something to say and to leavebehind and they want to do this, but where?"

New uses for QR codes are increasingly being explored assmartphones become mainstream. For example, last year the RoyalDutch Mint issued the world's first official coin with a QR codeto celebrate its centenary.

The deployment of QR codes on gravestones has taken off moreslowly, perhaps due to privacy concerns of grieving families,but has gained momentum in Japan and is also being experimentedwith in the United States, Britain, Australia and Germany.

One funeral company in the southern English town of Poole,for instance, is already offering to add QR codes to headstones.

"It's one way to make memories live in the digital world,"says Thomas Husson, principal consumer product strategy analystat IT research firm Forrester. "It highlights the potential ofthis technology to bridge the offline and online worlds."

Aspetos is working with stonemasons now to test technologythat lets QR codes get sandblasted onto gravestones directly atcemeteries at a fraction of the cost of traditional methods ofchiseling text or images onto memorials.

Exact costs were still under discussion, he said, but wouldbe low enough to make the technology available to all.Elsewhere, QR graves cost a few hundred dollars on top of theprice of the headstone, plus charges for hosting website data.

People who choose burial at sea or in forest cemeteries withno headstones could set up the codes in communal mourningcentres, leaving for posterity the milestones of their lives.

Bauer said clients can even have online eulogies recorded byprofessionals chosen from a network of experts.

"I can say for instance I want a Buddhist monk at a Russianorthodox funeral. That is possible."

The idea still faces some technical hurdles. How to storedata for posterity remains a challenge - a family could loserights to a web domain if it fails to keep up rental payments -and data protection laws in Europe can pose an obstacle.

But he said QR codes still had huge potential.

"The technology is by far not yet at the end. It's sensibleuse is just at the beginning," he said.

Timothy Vincent, from Wetter in Germany's western Ruhrregion, said he was one of two German masons he knew of who areusing the QR technology to customise gravestones.

He said the technology represented an opportunity to revisitthe ancient idea that stones could "speak" as silent witnessesto the past.

"We have the opportunity to return to the tradition ofmaking speaking stones because we can convey entirely differentcontent via QR codes. That is the beauty of it," he said.

"We are fetching virtuality into reality, and where elsedoes that happen?"

Vincent, who said he intended to put a QR code on his owngrave, said the technology had a bright future.

"Maybe it is a bit off-putting for our generation butsucceeding generations won't have any inhibitions about it. Theylive with technical innovation, QR codes, apps, Facebook and theinternet," he said.

(( For a TV story on QR codes at gravesites please click on

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(Additional reporting by Georgina Prodhan, editing by PaulCasciato)

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Keywords: AUSTRIA QR/GRAVES