Prague's Barcode Babies

A Midwesterner takes a shot at interpreting modern art.

I never liked modern art. I blame this on the fact that I grew up in the Midwest, and we’re not so refined in the heartlands. On the rare occasion I found myself in modern art galleries, I couldn’t shake the suspicion that I was the butt of an elaborate prank – the “artist” disguised in the gallery, snickering at my furrowed brow and squinted eyes, trying to make sense of a white canvas, or paint splatterings.

All that changed when I saw The Babies. If you’ve been to Prague, you’ve seen them. Ten of them, crawling up the sides of the Žižkov Television Tower, that monstrosity that no matter how hard you try to ignore, draws your gaze on the otherwise pleasant horizon, like a TV in the background of a bar. It hovers above the city, a giant antenna that sits atop what looks like a wiry spaceship. The Tower of Sauron at least had some semblance of humanity with its all-seeing eye. The Žižkov tower is faceless.

You can see the Babies up close too. There are three in Kampa Park, on the castle side of the river, near the Charles Bridge. I’ve ridden my bike past them the last seven years on my way to the university. There are often a few tourists taking photos, sitting atop a baby, or smiling with an arm propped against its bottom.

The babies are big, simple, kind of funny, until you round the head and find that in lieu of a face, each baby has a barcode, slightly inset of what looks like a parasitic worm’s jaws – like a robotic Venus fly trap. As with any modern art worth its salt, what it lacks in beauty, it makes up for in message.

The baby and barcode represent the perfect marriage of symbols for our era. We now unabashedly call ourselves consumers - and with internet technology, users. A word that used to be reserved for drug addicts. We’ve become dependent on our machines and screens to navigate, captivate, communicate, and find a mate – all sucking a mechanical teat.