|| ||| ||| |||||| | |||| |||||||| |||||| ||| MY YEAR IN BARCODE
One year all those ubiquitous mechanical barcode stamps began to annoy me. Hiding in plain sight on everything that became attached to me as I moved through my days. Items brought home, travel documentation, produce, personal effects, none could escape the barcode. And they were ugly little things these codes. Beeping and chirping as they followed me around. And so I began an exploration to challenge my distaste for barcodes. Could these unaesthetic symbols have any artistic auras hidden in their mechanical façades? Why did they bother me and seemingly no one else? Did I have to accept them?
I began collecting each one that crossed into my daily sphere. It actually probably all started with a sheet of paper tacked over the sink as a repository for those bothersome stickers on fruit. A sheet would get layered so full until it became a colorful carpet. Hmm... it was sort of pretty. Then another clean sheet would have to take its place. These and countless other barcodes I stashed in a bag. Soon I could barely keep up, this was crazy! What would a whole year of barcodes look like? Already something was happening, stirring, awakening in me with the obsession. I started seeing barcodes in wallpaper designs, a woman’s skirt, a dazzling visual art installation going down the escalator in an airport faraway. They taunted and amused me everywhere.
A year later I stopped. The bags went into the basement. On and off I would take them out and spread the accumulation into groups or stick barcodes to surfaces, but never settled with them. Their purpose remained something bubbling under the surface; these modern day hieroglyphs.
Eight years later I unfurled them from hiding and reopened my exploration. It was clear that the barcodes on their own could not describe that year 2012-2013, though they held embedded content about me recorded in a machine somewhere in the metaverse. Could those machines really understand me using basic barcode notations of what I consumed or where I traveled? Could any see the subtle unraveling that oddly began at that point in time, of who I had been hurtling unaware towards an uncertain future... I wondered in retrospect.
I noticed that the 3D scanning I used for data capture of ancient Maya hieroglyphs projected optical light patterns across their surfaces eerily similar to barcodes. Some connection was forming between my technical art work in the field and my inner artist.
As that artist struggled to be released from one-dimensional descriptions recorded by machines or written across academic pages, my year in barcode took form. A message to future machines that we are not simply explained by what barcodes can tell them. We’re not so systematic and precise. As the red laser reads across the quiet zone into the bars of coding, our complexities and imperfections won’t be apparent there. Could it be possible that for some future machine my visual art pieces will convey a message about my idiosyncrasies my aesthetics my humor my imperfections my pondering my affections. Perhaps like the hidden messages in the Maya hieroglyphs left for me to record…
I’m thrilled to collaborate on this project with architects and visual artists Nathan Fash, and Olga Mesa. Their creative energies and fresh insights joined with mine to develop the collective video piece in the show. Their enthusiasm and amazing talents took everything a step further and helped fuse the show into being.
A special thanks to friend and muse, gallerist Anthony Greaney, who during the pandemic called my attention to a studio opening in this vibrant community at 438 and (despite having gained a quirky neighbor) for encouragement to embark on this show, and the opportunity to rent his fine gallery space.
|| ||| ||| |||||| | |||| |||||||| |||||| ||| barbara jo Fall 2022 somerville, ma [barbarafash]