Task 4: Manual Scripts and Potato Printing

In this assignment I was tasked with creating 5 individual potato stamps and printing a word twice as identically as possible with them. This was a fun, hands on activity that I will reflect on below.

Was there something particularly challenging in the process?

The process itself was quite straightforward, however using the knives to cut out the imprints in the potato did prove to be a little tricky. I broke one of the letters in the process and therefore had to take a new piece of potato and start again. It was difficult to ensure the letters were close in size and similar in style. The heart emoji I attempted to create was especially difficult as the shape has rounded edges whereas I chose to use block letters to ensure I had straight lines in my text.

How much time did it take for you to create the stamps?

This project required time to go to the grocery store and buy the potatoes, walk home, cut the potatoes, draw my shapes, cut them, get the paint from my work, and then create the print. In total this was approximately an hour worth of time which is much longer than I thought it would take. Had I spent more time creating higher quality text and ensuring my prints used the same amount of paint, this could have easily taken another hour or two.

Have you noticed anything particular about the letters that you have chosen to reproduce?

The letters I chose make up my girlfriend’s name, along with a heart emoji, it took a lot of time to create them. The letters themselves were intentionally made as block letters to make it easier to cut out the stamps with knives. Even then, it was difficult to make the letters the same size and style. I can’t imagine how it was possible for artists to do this on a smaller scale or on metal with the original printing press.

The heart symbol was the stamp that took the longest and was the most difficult to carve as it had rounded edges, which made it tricky to cut without proper tools. My letters are not consistent in their size or thickness, making each one unique and not fitting what one would consider a true “font family.”

Considering the time and effort that took you to create a 5-letter word, how do you feel about the mechanization of writing?

This experiment and process was very enlightening and really made me think deeply about the authenticity of writing and language when it is produced through a physical/mechanical format because a piece of me was poured into this work and it takes on a form of art rather than just text on a display. I don’t believe that this is exclusively because I was carving out the letters that make up my girlfriend’s name, but rather because there was something both physical and mental about the process that required me to really take my time and energy to create something so simple.

As Lamb and McCormick state in their podcast:

“Books are, in the words of Carl Sagan, a means of storing additional information that exceeds the information carrying capacity of the brain. […] The book is a tool. It is an extension of the human body in the same way that a normal tool is, but in this case, it is more precisely an extension of the human mind, kind of an external hard drive for the brain.” (01:32)

This experience with the physical creation of letters aligns with Sagan’s suggestion that writing is not just a storage system for information, but an extension of our thoughts and efforts. When I carved the word, I wasn’t just reproducing text; I was actively embedding a part of myself into it, my time, effort, and intent. Unlike typing, which is an almost thoughtless and automatic process of the brain, stamping was a much more intimate engagement with the process of writing.

Additionally, the podcast explains how, “Books are a way for one author, or a group of authors, or even a legacy of authors to think their thoughts directly into another person’s brain.” (02:16) My hand-stamped word carries my personal imprint in a way that a typed word does not. The imperfections in my stamps, such as the variations in pressure, ink, and alignment, are all unique and inherent to the human element of the creation process. This echoes the podcast’s discussion about how the transition from hand-copied books to mechanized printing changed the way we interact with writing.

This task and the readings associated with this module have given me a much deeper appreciation for writing, books, printing, and the time and energy that has been invested into the transmission of knowledge over the centuries that these processes have existed. It was a truly authentic way to experience Marshall McLuhan’s concept of “the medium is the message” in a way that I had not previously considered.

Citations

Lamb, R., & McCormick, J. (Hosts). (2020, May 26). From the vault: Invention of the book, part 1. [Audio podcast episode]. In Stuff to blow your mind. iHeart Radio.