Category: Art Improving

While Art Critic is a profession, it is generally regarded a taboo to suggest improvements to existing works of art. This is probably rooted in the tradition of the artistic genius and in the idea of god given inspiration. Despite both concepts officially declared dead a long time ago, works of art are still regarded and treated as sanctuary atoms that may not be parted, damaged or altered, neither physically nor verbally. This column is about doing all of that (verbally anyway).

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Art Improving General

Corporate Fallout Detector

James Patten’s Corporate Fallout Detector is a device that allows identifying producers by scanning barcodes on packings. It checks a (local) database and gives an acoustic rating (much like a Geiger counter) of the companies moral and political correctness. It was shown at Transmediale 05 in Berlin. The detector is bulky, heavy and consists of two parts (= requires two hands). That is fine, because it’s a prototype.

What I really thought was questionable: There is no way of reading entries in the database. The user doesn’t know anything about the database (who collects the data, when was it last updated etc.) and it is stored locally (I suspect that one has to dismantle the whole thing in order to update the database: There was no USB socket and I don’t believe it comes with WLAN or Bluetooth).

Clearly Patten invested most of his creative energy and technical skill into building a thing that can read the producers name from packages. I suspect that he also invested much of it in creating a thing that looks and sounds spectacular, with it’s crude soviet design and the Geiger counter noise it makes.

Of all the problems to be solved in order to empower the customer and give him more instant information while doing his/her shopping, it seems to me that reading the producers name is the smallest problem. Usually it can be found in human readable notation on the package.

Here are some outlines of an application that could actually work and that would be more than just a gimmick:

  • a smart application for existing cellphones and other mobile devices is designed instead of a whole apparatus with primitive software
  • the application allows to enter a product or a company name and responds with a graphical representation of the company’s and the product’s rating in different categories (health, environment, social responsibility, etc.)
  • optionally detailed information along with the development of a company’s rating can be viewed
  • the database can be downloaded or can be used online, if the device is capable of connecting to the internet
  • ideally the user is can choose from different databases (maintained by different organizations). this means organizations need to be encouraged to start databases that to the application’s standard
  • in order to make entering product and company names quick and simple a special T9 system that recognizes both is integrated in the front end application