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A while ago I picked up a MiniDisc player from a thrift store. It was supposed to be a successor to the cassette tape, but the Sony-developed format never really took off outside of Japan. Unfortunately, the player came as-is and did not work at all. I tried taking it apart to do a simple cleaning and see if there were any glaring issues, but could find none, and also found myself overwhelmed by all the little pieces from the now disassembled player. I took the disc tray, and decided to use it create a cyanotype.

Cyanotypes, where the sun is the printer, are an appealing printing process because while most printing relies on a darkroom or a computer printer where the process is obfuscated, cyanotypes are a type printing in which the process can happen out in the open, right under the sun.

There's a nice contrast between the natural printing process, and the technological object being printed. Nam June Paik and Apichatpong Weerasethakul, among many others, are two artists that have explored this notion of technology as nature, nature as technology—that the boundaries are not so clear or obvious. It's also amusing to bring a part of technology that is often hidden into the sun, especially now that the technology is deemed obsolete.