Tyler Jacobsen and re-code.com
Tyler Jacobsen is considered to be a “tactical media” artist who has worked with companies such as Conglomco.org. His work can be considered a cross between art, multimedia, and activism. Many of his projects are purposely created to serve a purpose, cause dissent, and then dissolve. One of his larger projects was re-code.com. This website was developed to allow people to adjust the bar-code on products in chain stores, such as Wal-Mart with intentions of people paying what they think they should pay, rather than the high-prices found in stores. The barcode generator on re-code.com was used to take the UPC ID number of products and adjust them to represent a lower priced item.
The website was set up in a similar format to priceline.com. and had a similar color scheme of blue, orange, and white. In the top banner menu there are the different categories of products that recode.com has barcodes on. This allows the user to search in certain store “departments” such as electronics or office supplies to find barcodes on products that they need. On the left column menu there are individual steps on how to pre-shop, shop, and post shop. These links give directions to the user on how to collect and print off barcodes, to buying products using the barcodes, and finally how to add the website’s collection of barcodes.
On the home page there is a search engine that allows the viewer to look for a specific product and set a maximum price you are willing to pay for it. Underneath that is a place where you can add a product’s bar-code to the website’s database. Continuing down the page there is the Barcode Generator, where the viewer enters the UPC ID number of a product and the website generates a barcode for that product. Although not visible from the screen shot, the website also included a commercial that dramatized switching the bar-codes on products and an instructional video on re-coding products.
Finally, at the very bottom of the page there is a disclaimer in small print telling the viewer that re-code.com was created as satire and does not endorse illegal activity such as theft. They warn the viewer that malicious use of the bar-codes is illegal and they are there for personal amusement only.
Unfortunately re-code.com, like many other projects of Jacobsen’s, was shutdown due to a cease and desist letter from Wal-Mart. Although this website was short-lived, it did make enough of an impact to make the news on both ABC and CNN and has led other media activists to come up with similar hacks such as the Shiv Card which is used to evade the fare on London buses.
4 years ago