Microscopic comic strip etched onto a human hair
What may be the world's smallest comic strip, "Juana Knits the Planet," can't be read without the aid of a microscope.
Artist Berkeley Breathed, known for "Bloom County," once railed against the shrinking-comics phenomenon, a trend that found newspapers minimizing the size of comic strips, making them harder to read, and taking away much of their visual impact. He probably never quite imagined a comic strip would be shrunk down to fit on a single human hair, and that it would be a good thing.
Claudia Puhlfürst created the strip, called "Juana Knits the Planet," a series of panels showing a woman building creations like a tree and music starting from a ball of yarn. It was etched onto the hair using a focused ion beam, described as being similar to a fine laser beam. The result was captured in a video presentation.
The video is a sort of trailer for the Exceptional Hardware Software Meeting, a conference dedicated to open-source and DIY projects, taking place in Hamburg, Germany, in late June.
This isn't the first time we've seen super-tiny creations thanks to the focused ion beam tech. Previously, we've had the joy of viewing a sandcastle etched onto a grain of sand and a miniscule snowman with an etched face. It just goes to show that sometimes smaller is better.
(Via Boing Boing)