We’ve got all the work for ’14 Ways to Get Rich Quick’ finally sorted! Unfortunately we can’t be there for the install due to having to be present at the Tate opening tomorrow. The work we’ve made for the ‘exploit people’ method of getting rich takes the form of a replication of an old clock-in sheet from the 26th June 1974 fixed to the wall using chewed pieces of Wrigley’s Juicy Fruit chewing gum. The clock-in sheet will be made to look as if it belonged to Marsh’s Supermarket employee Sharon Buchanan who, at 08:01am on 26th June 1974, served a customer by the name of Clyde Dawson who purchased a 10-pack of Wrigley’s Juicy Fruit for $0.67. This was the first purchase ever to involve a product being scanned and registered using a Universal Product Code, UPC, otherwise known as the Barcode.
While the barcode is an extremely beneficial invention it also has many negatives, the image of a barcode is synonymous with many of these negatives, one of them being the exploitation of cheap labour; one of the considerable aspects of consumerism that are morally wrong. The barcode enabled local supermarkets to become global supermarkets, making hundreds of millions for the people at the top, while the wages for people like Sharon Buchanan only really increased with inflation. The barcode allowed the gap caused by exploitation of labour to increase; the amount the employers make for their company versus the amount they get paid/are valued by the company. Thus fuelling a tiered wage system and creating a hierarchy of class allowing shareholders to profit off their dividends; sitting and collecting as apposed to sitting and scanning.
The title of the work is ‘Woodland’s Bullseye’, named after the incident where inventor, Norman Joseph Woodland, had the idea to create a visual morse code that formed the first barcode. Woodland spent time at his grandparents' home in Miami. While sitting on the beach he ran his fingers through the sand, making dot and dash marks, like the Morse code he had learned when he was a Boy Scout. He realised that it would be possible to encode information using simple lines on paper to signify different numbers. In their first form barcodes took the form of thin and thick lines in concentric circles, much like a bullseye. Prior to having this eureka moment he worked on the Manhattan Project where he was part of the team that worked to develop the atomic bomb, consequently the term ‘Woodland’s Bullseye’ refers to both a military bullseye and Barcodes. The Barcode is now used 5 billion times a day, with the unstoppable rise of consumerism, chain-stores and digital purchase it’s no surprise that it all started with 31-year-old Sharon Buchanan scanning a packet of chewing gum, an impulse buy.
The work for the show at Tate Modern is also complete! The exhibition is titled 'Tate Exchange: An Art School' so we’re setting up a school-photo stand. The viewers are going to be grouped with strangers and photographed by a professional photographer in the style of a photograph taken at school on a 'school photo day'. The viewers will then get to take away a souvenir involving the photo from their interaction with the artwork and with the strangers in the space. There will be a range of souvenirs available, ranging from a keyring which we will print in the space to a 2017 yearbook which will involve images of people from the entire class (all strangers). They will be able to order this and have it posted to them after the class is complete.
The yearbook will involve a fictional school/academy with everything from the school song to a school crest and a word from the fictional headmaster of the institution. This has been influenced by research into distributed networks, especially online where we see individuals signing up/enroling/pledging allegiance to institutions populated by strangers and without a physical location: Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Instagram etc. We’ve got props and outfits/school uniforms available as well 'art' objects for the 'students' to pose with; all of which will hopefully encourage people to get involved with the artwork more, and the speed of it will allow more people to experience it.
