- Was there something particularly challenging in the process?
Prior to starting this challenge I expected two difficulties, 1) cutting with enough precision to create legible letters, and 2) flipping the letters so that once painted they read the right way. Number one proved more difficult by the simple fact that my dishwasher was running with all my good/realistic knives to use for this project, as a result, these lovely potatoes were carved with my larger carving knife, one that is about 5 inches long, and I rarely use. This fun twist added a new layer of challenge, as the increased length made precision cuts harder, and the width made cutting the holes nearly impossible. It seems Number 2 was not horribly done, I seemed to have gotten ⅗ letters the right way, to be fair, two of those letters are mirrorable. Alas, it seems I overcomplicated the geometry of reflection for the “g” and the “h”, resulting in the “g” looking more like an “e”, and “h” just being wrong.
An unanticipated challenge was keeping hold of/picking up the now slightly slimy/paint-covered potatoes. In the middle of the paper, you will see the remnants of a potato that slipped away, and some letters are more ‘blurry’, as when I pressed them down they slid back and forth.
- How much time did it take for you to create the stamps?
From planning to cutting, to painting and printing the total process took around 30 mins. Most of the time was spent planning and cutting. Overall whilst the process was “quick” to my anticipated time, it still was not effective enough for this to have remained the primary form of print when done by hand. The shift to mechanicalized printing is clearly a key influence on the literacy of the world.
- Have you noticed anything particular about the letters that you have chosen to reproduce?
Unaware when I began to cut and print the letters, 2 of my 5 letters are mirrorable, so regardless of the vertical axis they would reproduce the same letters. Of course, these letters were also some of the easiest to carve, as they had no curvature or main orientation.
- Considering the time and effort that took you to create a 5-letter word, how do you feel about the mechanization of writing?
I believe that the mechanization of writing is one of the largest steps forwards humans have been able to accomplish. Lamb and McCormick (2021-present) illustrate the importance in which print or “recorded” media will not change, the word of mouth and fables will continue to shift, but once recorded it is established (Invention, Part 1, 6:11). Mechanizing the process also created a base understanding, and began to create a tangible language that could thus be exchanged and formulated to communicate beyond limited repetition. If writing remained as either a scholar-limited tool, or a tool in which each passage has been handwritten the margin for error, and limited accessibility would be vast. No longer would we have been able to inform the masses, store understandings, or even identify truths or fallacies. Mechanization was the first jump in technology, the first stepping stone, without that technology much of what we know today may not have evolved.
References:
R. Lamb & J. McCormick.May 8, 2021. From the Vault: Invention of the Book, Part 1[Audio podcast episode]. In Stuff To Blow Your Mind.
Elvio Castelli
July 13, 2022 — 6:53 am
Hi Srupa,
I enjoyed reviewing your assignment.
Your comments about mechanization being one of the largest steps forward for humans caused me to reflect on oral stories. Do you think it’s beneficial that oral stories change? Keep in mind oral stories weren’t mindlessly changed, they were often purposely changed to represent the views and values or even specific situations of the society that’s retelling them (Ong, 2002, p. 41).
Further, I think that it is a common mistake that people think written texts “…will not change, the word of mouth and fables will continue to shift, but once recorded it is established…” (Srupa, 2022). Smith (1999) speaks about the false legitimacy that people place on a modern digital text. Smith (1999) points out in Why Digitize? that digital texts “…can be changed easily and without trace of erasures or emendations…” How do we identify truths and fallacies when everything is digitilized and anyone can alter and republish text?
I was also thinking about the vast amount of information we have kept because of mechanization. Like Bush’s 1945 Memex, the internet and its various hard drives of data are meant to collect all of our text. While Rumsey (2017) asks, what can we afford to lose? I’m wondering if we should be saving every piece of information just because we can? It reminds me of the struggle to be ‘forgotten’ on the web and the control of our information.
References
Bush, V. (1945). As we may think. The Atlantic Monthly, 176(1), 101-108.
Brown University. (2017). Abby Smith Rumsey: “Digital Memory: What Can We Afford to Lose?”
Ong, W.J. (2002). Orality and Literacy: 30th Anniversary Edition (2nd ed.). Routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9780203426258
joseph villella
July 16, 2022 — 10:04 am
Hi Srupa,
I enjoyed reading your journey through the potato printing assignment! I got a bit stressed out during the assignments as I was having great difficulty getting my cuts right as well. I had to keep cutting back part of the potato when making an error with a letter and slowly began running out of room to hold the potato while making the print. The unanticipated challenge that you mentioned was exactly what I encountered as well. I had assumed the hardest part would be the cutting, but it became very difficult to hold the potatoes and keep them in place without sliding off the page.
I am in complete agreement with you in saying that the mechanization of writing was incredibly important for all of us. It really did allow for writing to become more accessible and standardized for humans from the perspective of transferring information. Having text be uniform through digital means, with the ability to change fonts to add character, is something that I take for granted.