{"id":2694,"date":"2013-07-18T15:35:59","date_gmt":"2013-07-18T19:35:59","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.myassettag.com\/blog\/?p=2694"},"modified":"2025-03-12T06:19:02","modified_gmt":"2025-03-12T10:19:02","slug":"artist-guillermo-bert-weaves-qr-codes-into-indigenous-tapestries","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.myassettag.com/blog\/artist-guillermo-bert-weaves-qr-codes-into-indigenous-tapestries\/","title":{"rendered":"Artist Guillermo Bert weaves QR codes into indigenous tapestries"},"content":{"rendered":"

When you look at a QR code, you likely see a collection of pixelated lines and shapes coded to label a product or a piece of inventory or equipment. When an artist like\u00a0Guillermo Bert<\/a>\u00a0looks at the same QR code, he sees something entirely different.<\/p>\n

\"Guillermo<\/a>

Guillermo Bert with at a show of his encoded textiles at the Pasadena Museum of California Art<\/p><\/div>\n

The mixed media artist had been incorporating various kinds of encrypted symbols into his art works for a while when it occurred to him that the QR codes used in everyday commerce resembled the pictograms of some of the ancient cultures of the Americas. For the Los Angeles-based artist, the resemblance was not just a curious coincidence; it was a call to make a new kind of art.<\/p>\n

\u201cBar coding is so universal; it\u2019s right in your face, but you can\u2019t read it,\u201d he says. \u201cThen I find out that the new series of bar codes looks just like traditional iconography of the indigenous peoples of the Americas.\u201d It was an invitation to mix old and new. For the old, he chose traditional patterned textiles as his medium. For the new, QR coding beckoned. Combining the two would, he hoped, create \u201ca new hybrid from the clashing cultures.\u201d In the end, the mash-up worked so well that museum-goers could actually read the woven messages with their smart phones.<\/p>\n

When he started the textile project, Bert had already been working with coded symbols and patterns. One series of mixed media works was based on Greek typography encrypted with English translations. Another group of woodcuts featured bar codes superimposed over iconic American images in an ironic commentary on what he calls \u201cthe commoditization of the world.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"QR-coded<\/a>

One of the works from Bert’s previous series of bar code-inspired works.<\/p><\/div>\n

He was looking for other kinds of encrypted symbols when he started studying the newer generations of bar codes. Besides the resemblance to the art of indigenous peoples, Bert realized that the new codes, with their capacity to transmit volumes of data and their use on everything from boarding passes to hospital ID bracelets, have serious implications for the concept of identity. \u201cYour identity becomes digitized; your entire history is online. You\u2019re losing your identity because you can\u2019t contain it,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n

At the same time, he continues, \u201cthe indigenous peoples are losing their identity for different reasons. Their culture is fading, the people are dying. I thought, \u2018What if I combine the [two aspects] of identity loss?\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

The project took Bert to his homeland of Chile, where he sought out members of the\u00a0Mapuche<\/a>\u00a0community. \u201cMapuche\u201d is the term applied to the surviving members of a number of indigenous Chilean tribes. Bert identified five individuals\u2014a woodcarver, a shaman, a performer, a filmmaker and a poet\u2014and filmed them telling their stories. He then chose the most essential quotation from each and translated it into code, using a simple coding app. He located a Mapuche master weaver, Anita Paillamil, who agreed to incorporate Bert\u2019s designs into traditional woven textiles made from natural wool and dyed with plant-based pigments.<\/p>\n

Bert\u2019s first attempts to make art from the new technology centered on the\u00a0PDF417<\/a>\u00a0bar codes. He used Photoshop to superimpose the code over a traditional textile image. \u201cIt looked just stunning,\u201d he says, \u201cbut it did not work\u201d for weaving because in PDF417 codes, \u201cnothing is aligned, the pixels are very random, very abstract.\u201d He found a form of QR code that worked better: the appropriately named Aztec code, which takes its name from its center squares, which resemble a view of an Aztec pyramid from the air. \u201cAztec code worked better,\u201d he explains. \u201cThe squares all line up. I thought because of the Latin American character, it would be more appropriate.\u201d<\/p>\n

Bert created five designs that combined QR coded quotations from his subjects with traditional Mapuche iconography. Then he and Paillamil worked together to figure out how to transfer the codes to the textiles. \u201cIt was a challenge precisely because it\u2019s two different technologies that don\u2019t belong together,\u201d says Bert. The work proved to be so complicated that Paillamil returned with Bert to Los Angeles, where he built two looms for her to work on. She stayed for two-and-a-half months until they perfected the technique.<\/p>\n

After two years of work, Bert\u2019s efforts had produced five scannable tapestries, each quoting one of the Mapuche individuals Bert had interviewed. One of the codes translates as \u201cWe need the same things that a tree does. We cannot live without the land.\u201d Another reads, \u201cWe are proof that in the 21st century, an ancestral nation still exists.\u201d<\/p>\n

He was thrilled that the Aztec codes actually worked and that viewers whose smart phones contained scanner apps could translate them on the spot. \u201cI was shooting for the conceptual approach. I thought that we might not get all the way, and if it doesn\u2019t read, we\u2019ll leave it at that. But it works. It\u2019s a functional bar code in tandem with the ancient technologies.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"Guillermo<\/a>

Textiles on display at the Pasadena Museum of California Art<\/p><\/div>\n

The tapestries were displayed at the Pasadena Museum of California Art earlier this year. \u00a0They are slated to be shown in New York, Denver and Santiago, Chile, over the next few years.<\/p>\n

Meanwhile, Bert is continuing to code the words of indigenous peoples. He has already created two more textile prototypes using\u00a0Zapotec symbols\u00a0and is planning to go to Oaxaca, Mexico to work with the weaving communities there.\u00a0 He is also working with the University of Arizona to create works using Navajo-style textiles and beadwork.<\/p>\n

So far, Guillermo Bert\u2019s coded textiles have cost $100,000. Support has come from individual donors and a Kickstarter campaign that raised $35,000. He is hoping to find sympathetic donors, possibly from the technology sector, who can help fund future projects he envisions with the indigenous peoples of Brazil, Guatemala and Ecuador.<\/p>\n

Bert is clearly enamored of his creations.\u00a0 \u201cThe technology is cold,\u201d he says, \u201cbut I see the beauty in it. There\u2019s an elegance that comes through. When you use the technology and get into a humanistic approach, it really makes sense.\u201d<\/p>\n

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