Wednesday, 6 June 2012

Farmers' Market Conversations plate

Christine and I have been working away, discussing ideas about how to get stories onto the small surface of a plate. Christine has been inspired by the pottery shards she and our daughter have picked up at our clay digs and on beaches, feeling that they have stories to tell, if only they could speak. See this post. This isn't so far fetched; archeologists draw pictures of human existence from fragments.
Christine started this quest at the start of April, which you can see here.



One way to get more stories or information on an object is to take the viewer to a web site, using QR codes. We are still working out how to get the QR code onto the plate. We could have transfers made and fire them on, but we want the juxtaposition of the old country style of pot and modern technology to be emphasised by drawing the QR code on it, so it looks hand made. 

We do use contemporary technology, however. The QR code must be drawn very accurately, so the first step is to get the image of the QR code on the plate so it can be scratched out. Here we are trying to use acetone to release the ink of a  laser print onto the clay surface.
 It doesn't work very well...

Gradually Christine manages to get the QR code scratched onto the plate, with a combination of tracing and good old fashioned looking.


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