Edeka, a grocery retailer from Germany, found a a very creative way to get into the holiday spirit with the use of their in-counter scanners at their checkout lanes. Scanners all have the means to produce audio feedback for positive scans which, in many models, can be customized to specific pitches or sounds. Edeka put these programmable tones to use to make all their checkout lanes into a ‘playable’ instrument. Each lane plays a specific pitch so with a little practice their reps could perform Jingle Bells by simply scanning products in the right sequence.

Motivated by the typical beeps and tones of a POS barcode scanner, Košice-based artist Jakub Pišek decided to develop a way to make music with the same tools being employed in retail stores. With the help of some of his friends, Jakub started staging grocery store performance where they would scan anything in the store to create music. Each different barcode equates to a variety of sounds which can be composed in the moment by simply scanning. See the performances in action in the video below.