(THIS ARTICLE IS MACHINE TRANSLATED by Google from Norwegian)
UKAS ELECTIONS
[machine] This little rascal should be on all shopping trips now until Christmas. The Corporate Fallout Detector might be a bit like a Cold War geiger counter, if you remember what they looked like. So it's a sturdy box with large switches and hands in classic reodel rim design, and it can give you a whole new view on barcodes.Bar codes have somewhat undeservedly become a symbol of everything that is difficult and difficult in the global economy. But barcodes are nothing but a language and can say anything. When you direct the scanner on The Corporate Fallout Detector to the bar code pasted into an item, the appliance tells you the degree to which the product takes environmental and labor rights into consideration. The bar code is checked against a large register on the internet, which reports back on how the item scores. The worse the result, the higher the machine beeps.
Since there is no global authority that can punish companies that violate international environmental and employee rules, we are left to the theory of corporate social responsibility. But it is not so good to keep track of which companies are breaking the rules, and which goods should therefore be avoided. Then The Corporate Fallout Detector is nice to have. This machine simply makes social responsibility theories work in practice. Just a pity that it does not currently work and does not exist – as something other than an art project. James Patten has created this work, which has been exhibited at MoMa, The Museum of Modern Art in New York.
The British consumer organization ethiscore.org agrees with Patten that the terms behind the logos should be more easily accessible to consumers, and has therefore made ethical rankings, see page 14 in this issue of Ny Tid.
By the way, Peter Coffin has also made art of barcodes. He participated in the Free Biennale in New York in 2002 with stickers that can be pasted over the usual barcodes on groceries and other products. When you arrive at the checkout with one of Coffin's barcodes, the display shows "have, take, give, want, lose, need"
[case prose] However, if you are in doubt whether the individual consumer is the right addressee in this case, and whether it is possible to strengthen the political institutions at the global level, the book Global Covenant: The Social Democratic Alternative to the Washington Consensus is recommended by David Held. [mobile technology] But maybe The Corporate Fallout Detector and Ethiscore can be combined in the future? In Japan, of course, they already have mobile phones that can read barcodes, preferably the next generation of codes, so-called "DataMatrix 2D barcode". You just tilt the phone, take a picture of the code, and then the phone starts doing what it has been told.So far, it is not surprising mainly advertisers who have used this technology, but here more people should know their visiting hours. Banners and stickers with links to web pages, email addresses and music hang around posters and stickers on street corners in Japan.
[concert] As the multinational companies tend to say: «With words big as headlines, the Gospel according to you, is broadcast on frequencies, too frequent to see through. But you've got Nothing to say. Nothing to say. Nothing to say – to me ». The quote is taken from Motorpsychos Demon Box. On December 5, they play in Bergen, on the 7th in Oslo and on the 8th in Trondheim. Juhu!