Bar Code Hotel (overview image above) by Perry Hoberman employes barcodes as an interface (image below left) to a virtual environment (image below right) and is one of those works which seems to preempt the current interest in The Internet of Things. While the use of networks as part of this work (excluding the social network created between its users) is minimal it bears a striking resemblance to some works created over the last few years with R.F.I.D. / Data Matrix including I Can Read You, Urban Eyes and Meghan Trainor’s work.

Within the installation the public interacts with what is displayed on screen by scanning bar codes which correspond to:

familiar and inanimate things from everyday experience: eyeglasses, hats, suitcases, paper clips, boots, and so on.

The behavior of these everyday objects can then be modified with bar codes which correspond to certain actions or effects on the virtual objects themselves such as movement, location etc. or between them and other virtual objects such as chase, avoid, merge etc.

The public simultaneously influences and interacts with computer-generated objects in an oversized three-dimensional projection, scanning and transmitting printed bar code information instantaneously into the computer system. The objects, each corresponding to a different user, exist as semi-autonomous agents that are only partially under the control of their human collaborators. Each guest who checks into the Bar Code Hotel dons a pair of 3D glasses and picks up a bar code wand, a lightweight pen with the ability to scan and transmit printed bar code information instantaneously into the computer system. Because each wand can be distinguished by the system as a separate input device, each guest can have their own consistent identity and personality in the computer-generated world. And since the interface is the room itself, guests can interact not only with the computer-generated world, but with each other as well.