“Something people use but don’t necessarily look at”
Like the prints of fingers on humans, barcodes are the sense of unique
identity to products in the consumer world. It’s one thing in the video to play
the “identity game” (Murray, 2008) with the product in the picture however the
main idea is in fact to examine the barcodes. Each is different, not just a
group of monochromatic stripes with a corresponding numerical value, but a
unique and individual pictorial sequence used for identification. Surprisingly, barcodes
appear on nearly everything, which I only began noticing in selecting them as
my object of focus for this assignment. The images depict an extensive range of
goods from food items to concert tickets and even Government letters. In
Murray’s article she talks about how photo sharing has become about “signifiers
of identity” and “daily life” (Murray, 2008) and barcodes are a clear example
of these. They are an everyday aesthetic, thousands scanned each hour
most noticeably in supermarkets and retail stores, but also in less known
areas, like distribution warehouses and mail handling facilities. Barcodes are
a branding of identity and an extremely overlooked system of organization in
the world.
Susan Murray.
(2008). Digital Images, Photo-Sharing, and Our Shifting Notions of Everyday
Aesthetics. Journal of Visual Culture. 7 (147), 134.
Susan Murray.
(2008). Digital Images, Photo-Sharing, and Our Shifting Notions of Everyday
Aesthetics. Journal of Visual Culture. 7 (147), 144.
C. Murphy 42878810
C. Murphy 42878810
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