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Humans seems to have an obsession with barcodes which goes far beyond an appreciation for the efficiency they provide in a consumer setting. They seem to have come to represent something very particular, the distilling of large amounts of information into something simple. Alongside this is the fact that it is something so simple that humans cannot understand, even if you know the patterns for the simple Code 39 barcodes, the digits you get are useless, barcodes are essentially meaningless without a relevant database.

It is this efficient reduction to the bare minimum alongside the inaccessible nature which has fostered the obsession with barcodes. Not only do we see them in everyday life but many people have started using them as a symbol of our society, with negative connotations. The fad for, supposedly, ironic barcode tattoos does seem to be gradually disappearing but barcodes are still found in much contemporary art. Just go the the BarcodeArt website and you can ‘personalize’ your own barcode. Is the fascination here with the fact that you are making your own something which feels inherently de-personal?

Infamous, and now very much mainstream, graffiti artist Banksy has used barcodes in his art. This undoubtedly helped popularise the idea, but it was definitely not original in concept. It only takes a quick google search to find barcode based art going all the way back into the 90s. Now with the advent of QR Codes which have enough redundancy to allow for large amounts of manipulation we are seeing a whole new wave of barcode related art. So where will it go next? Personally, I don’t believe it will go anywhere further than this, after all the barcode is a functional entity. However, in terms of linking users to content in the art world it is still poorly used, so maybe that is where the real progress is to be made.

So although barcodes have become a symbol of society as ‘the machine’ it is more reflective of their efficiency than any fault.