It took me about 45 minutes to create the potato stamps. I realized that carving by hand limits the number of texts we can reproduce and transmit in our lifetime, which restricts the sharing and construction of ideas. In addition, text technologies are situated in the physical environment with unexpected limitations. As a result, the process makes me appreciate computer printing.
The nature of the media (a potato) has heavily influenced my production process and the end result. First, it requires additional mental efforts. Unlike patterns and drawings were shown by Juniper in her tutorial (2015), the direction and organization of English letters matter. It’s particularly challenging because the carver has to be cognitively aware of the horizontal reversal when the stamp is flipped upside-down against the paper. I didn’t think about it at first and ended up having an erroneous copy.
It requires extra effort to convert the vivid printed results of asymmetrical letters like “P” and “R” to the meaningless shape to be carved. As the computer remediates printing by enhancing its function of transmitting and reproducing texts (Bolter, 2001), such cognitive ability is lost. Thankfully, the potato allows some levels of modifications to the text. The potato is thick and cuttable; so when I carved it wrong, I can just cut off the top layer. I can also convert an “R” to “P” by cutting off the last stroke. These are difficult to do with stones, animal bones, or turtle shells used in the past (Lamb & McCormick, 2021). Second, it has temporal restrictions. If I waited for a few days between carving and printing, the potato will dry off or rot. It implies that I can append more letters to the printed text, but I can’t duplicate more of the previous texts after a set amount of time. In addition, potato is seasonal. We need additional technologies like a greenhouse, fridge, or preservation chemicals to reproduce texts on an everyday basis. Third, it has spatial restrictions. The size of the potato makes it difficult to carve all five letters on the same surface. Therefore, it is difficult to align the potato-printed letters in reproducing texts. As shown in the results, the “PR” of the top-left word is slightly higher than “INT” which causes the differences in duplicates.
References
Lamb J.R. & McCormick J. (Hosts). (2021, May 8).
From the Vault: Invention of the Book. [Audio podcast episode].
In Stuff to Blow Your Mind. iHeart Radio. https://www.iheart.com/podcast/stuff-to-blow-your-mind-21123915/episode/from-the-vault-invention-of-the-82316952/?keyid%5B0%5D=Stuff%20To%20Blow%20Your%20Mind&keyid%5B1%5D=From%20the%20Vault%3A%20Invention%20of%20the%20Book%2C%20Part%201&sc=podcast_widget
Bolter, Jay David. (2001). Writing space: Computers, hypertext, and the remediation of print [2nd edition]. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum.
Juniper. (2015). Revamping Your Stuff With POTATO STAMPS. [Video]. Youtube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tRKyECgL1wY