It just misses the point of the process.

My response to this leapfrogged over the excitement of potential to hand-carved gravestones. My town's cemeteries contain mostly historical locally quarried and carved granite markers. The modern mechanically- fabricated gravestone are wholly different objects, they themselves without life. They feel generic, cold, and removed from the intimacy of love and loss. The hand lettering have lovely particularities and imperfections, some so subtle they're more sensed than seen. The markers convey a specificity of an individual mourned and the life of the gravestone itself.

As someone who has a tattoo with a very delicate, precise design (that I created digitally), I'm very glad I got it applied manually by a real artist. It's a self-devised form of rotary, optical binary (prizes for whoever can decode it!) but the natural entropy over the years since I got it done is PART of the magic, all systems wither and gently fail, often beautifully. That's kind of the point.

https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fi/820etc62376fmkbs1nfgd/IMG_2745.jpg?rlkey=mrrapwups7fyd0u69z5jou927&st=wxxy0erd&dl=0

🤮 I’m 55 and started my tattoo journey 3 years ago. It’s true what they say, one you start…but what a lame idea. Discomfort is right. I honestly don’t think they hurt. Are they unpleasant together? Hell yeah. I don’t mind unpleasant. And I love talking to the artists. I love traveling and finding a dope artist and getting a tattoo as a reminder of my travels. I have a regular artist who never ceases to amaze me when I give him a kernel of an idea and show up for my appointment and am stunned by what he came hom with. I’m a high school teacher and my co teacher tattoos on the side. I was just saying that AI will never take that gig. Who knew some assholes would try to invent a tattooing robot

Like so many ideas that look cool and futuristic ideas in a cyberpunk movie setting, I think this is actually terrible. It's a Torment Nexus for skin art.

If this produces another "creator economy" for tattoo artists to sell their designs worldwide, it'll deliver the same kind of long tail popularity distribution we see elsewhere on the internet: most of the attention will go to a tiny set of designs, and everyone else will fight over the scraps.

Most tattoo artists work independently, or are part of very small businesses. This is a naked attempt devalue the labour of these artisans, and to make sure that all the surplus value flows to the platform owners instead. It's a playbook we've seen over and over again in the last twenty years. I hate it for what it does, and I fear it because I know it works. I wouldn't use this kind of machine myself, but I know that many people would.

The barrier to entry for getting a tattoo can be quite high, because the service you get is so particular and individual. Just a few weeks ago my kid and I were wondering why there isn't a chain of tattoo shops -- like a kind of Claire's Accessories -- where you can walk in and get the same set of earrings no matter whether you're in Oakland, Paris, or Edinburgh. If this device takes off, would that kind of thing become possible? Yes. Would it make traditional, personalized tattoos more valuable and attractive because of their uniqueness? No. It would wipe out most of the industry as people get their "off the rack" flash cheaply elsewhere.