How to pattern codes?

Besides bar coding and fingerprinting objects of the physical world, we introduce here the idea of patterning codes i.e. of making patterns from codes in imitation of a process of pattern formation compatible with physics. The case of images of paper patterns at cm scale is considered to illustrate. Starting from an approach where codes are viewed as part of the initial conditions of a Turing process, the interest of the game is increased by constraining the resulting patterns to be readable: the originating codes must be retrievable from the patterns. In this framework, an analysis based on non-negative matrix factorization provides a straightforward way to pattern codes through an additive synthesis interpretable as a superposition of layers.