“Coded”

In this series of work I explore three main ideas: Fear, Observation, and Instinct.
I do this by focusing on the way numbers control and represent a human and how inversely, a human represents a number. In these images, I blend barcodes with self portraits. The bar code represents tracking systems, dehumanizing automation, efficiency, and commodities that are so important in this day and age. Essentially you are a “slave to the number.”

These images question our individuality in a world that feeds on a constant stream of data. On a large scale are we nothing more than just a series of random numbers inside ever-growing databases? Are you nothing more than your Credit Card number? Your Driver’s License number? Social Security number? PIN codes? Phone number? RFID tags? We are acquiring new numbers to track us every day. As an individual are you worth the sum of your numbers… what are you worth?

Using a variety of media such as plastic, vinyl, Photography, and Digital prints, I exaggerate the way numbers have subtly infiltrated our lives and suppressed our natural instincts. I believe it is human instinct to recoil against following the status quo, but at the same time fear not following it. It is my fear that we will fall victim one day to this system of numbers once it has been corrupted and exploited. It is my fear that this day will arrive sooner than later. This is the price we all pay for living in the society we have created.