The Irony Behind Love’s Favorite Flower
Roses, the symbol of loving devotion, grace many celebrations with their beauty. But they hide a deeper side in exporters like Kenya. Behind their romantic allure lies a stark reality: the environmental strains of cultivation, exacerbated by water scarcity. Moreover, predominantly female workers endure challenging and oft explotative conditions. This juxtaposition challenges roses’ idealized view against complexities extending into issues of sustainability, social justice, and economic impact.
Function & Design
Data from flower exports is used to heat melting ice infused with blue ink. This drips onto packing paper which is progressively fed beneath it through a combination of automatic timing and proximity detection - in which adoration of the work (as per the rose) is what drives the feed mechanism (originally from an electric typwriter). A microcontroller, preloaded with the data operates these components.
Resultant prints from each day's output