Etch or engrave a graphic on any material using one of the methods discussed in the class.
Assignment Prompts (Respond to these in your Notion post as relevant to your process):
What is the relation between the substrate you choose and your making process? How does manual process fare against the machine?
What is the relation between time and the detail that you color/stamp/etch/raster output? How does elongation or shortening that time effect that output?
Can the material that is etched away become the output?
Think of the local, global, cultural, historical context of the thing you're making -- how is it related to a historical/cultural practice and it's tension with machining/industries? What makes this making more human vs not?
Bananas came to my mind when thinking about the relation between materials/engraving output and time, as a Banana's appearance usually change a lot while going through its ripening process - (If they are not eaten) they will end up with having a lot brown spots because it is overrippen by producing too much of ethylene which cause the yellow pigments in its peel to decay. And this change cannot be reversed.
I first went to the Making Center to see if they would allow me to experiment some engraving on a banana. The technician there was very nice, but didn't like the idea lol. Though He questioned a lot about why I wanted to laser engrave on food and expressed his concern that there would be a bunch of students coming in and working on bananas if he opened up this possibility, he eventually let me do this work!
As bananas don't have a large flat surface, I could only engrave a small graphic each time. So I just simply put a "BANANA" on it. Not being creative at all.
Laser Engraving Process:
Engraving Output:
5 minutes after being taken out of the machine
After knowing laser engraving on a banana is doable and unlikely cause any problem to the machine, I decided to engrave more words on the same banana so that I could see a comparison of the newly engraved graphic with the old one.