RintaroFujita Portfolio

The barcode scanner is a device that has evolved solely for the purpose of having a machine read symbols. Its internal image sensor was never designed to form an image for human eyes. This work creatively misuses this ready-made device, reinterpreting a sensor built for identification as an apparatus for photography. An optical system that only focuses at close range, an image that can only be recorded in monochrome, an exposure locked inside the device and impossible to control — these are not failures of photography, but constraints the system originally held in order to “read.” The thermal printer used for output is likewise misused: a device built for disposable information such as receipts and labels is repurposed to output an object — a photograph.

The barcode scanner and the thermal printer have existed together as an ordinary pair of devices at the checkout counter. What passes through them are nothing more than symbols for identifying and managing merchandise. The function to output an image already exists within the development kit, but it is intended only for sensor calibration. This work uses that function not for checkout, nor for calibration, but for photography. Precisely because this machine was never designed with any consideration for making a photograph look beautiful, it produces a texture unlike any intentionally designed filter or sample image.

With no viewfinder and no screen, the aim is set by intuition and experience alone. At the moment the trigger is pulled, what has been captured is still unknown. Only after a brief pause, when the printer spits it out onto paper, does one finally come face to face with the image.

Most of what this device has been pointed at carries no price tag, nor any registered identity like an employee badge or a ticket. The machine dutifully attempts to classify it, but the result is never used anywhere. What is sent to the printer is the raw image, prior to classification. Within a system where everything is instantly classified and assigned value, what can be seen in an image that remains unclassified?

Credit:
Rintaro Fujita(Creator)