Artists Etch Comic Strip Into a Single Strand of Hair

BY Glenn McDonald

The eye-strain implications alone are staggering.

To promote the upcoming Exceptional Hardware Software Meeting (EHSM) in Hamburg, Germany, a team of DIY artists and scientists has etched the world’s smallest comic strip on a single human hair.

Titled “Juana Knits The Planet,” the strip was created by German artist Claudia Puhlfurst, then carved into the hair using a process called focused ion beam (FIB) etching. “A very sharp and high-speed jet of matter is produced and directed towards the hair to etch it — similar to a fine laser beam,” according to the project’s YouTube page.

IMAGE: EXCEPTIONALLY HARD AND SOFT MEETING (EHSM) 2014

Each of the strip’s 12 frames measures in at around 25 micrometers. A micrometer, or micron, is one millionth of a meter. A typical human hair is anywhere from 20 to 200 microns in width.

The second annual EHSM event bills itself as a meeting of international makers, hackers, scientists and engineers aiming to deliver on the “third industrial revolution.” The rest of the conference looks pretty trippy, too.

Among the presentations: electron beam welding, quantum cryptography and the interesting things that happen when molten glass, heated to 1,260 degrees Celcius, hits water. I’ve always been curious about that.

You can check out the “Juana Knits the Planet” project video below.