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Daniel Becker’s Barcode Plantage builds on recent efforts to use coding technology to allow consumers to track goods, letting visitors generate visual and aural works based on the structure of an item’s code while learning some details of its manufacture. Relying on the Internet to search national product code databases, the project analyzes the information retrieved and creates flowing, colorful, arboreal growths that emerge from the short string of numbers. The number of figures in the code determine the number of curves in the “tree,” while the more detailed data guide the shape and color of each curve, and create a short melody that plays as the tree spreads across the screen.
While not as detailed as other explorations of bar codes and product tracking, Becker’s work gives users an immediate–and oddly visceral–glimpse of the complexity of global trade and the role of information in interconnected economies.
. Historian Shae Davidson's research interests include public policy and the relationship between culture and civil society. His publications range from articles on industrial history to absurdist poetry.
