Digital Art for heirs
a.bucsay
I would be most interested in hearing opinions from the group regarding the
longevity of digital collages, giclees etc. Some folks seem to think they
are not archival ... which I assume to mean that they will not remain the
same during the passing of significant amounts of time. What about the
pigments in the inks used by the IRIS and Epson printers? What scientific
studies has anyone out there read regarding the color fastness of these
inks? Are the inks non-reactive (chemically with the ground) in nature?
Could a person buy a giclee print with the realistic assumption that it
would make a good family heirloom?
Charles Eicher
In article <01bd1f94$4f3c1380$3749bacd@violet>, "a.bucsay"
<a.bu...@ix.netcom.com> wrote:
Iris prints are not archival, not in any sense of the word used amongst
artists, or more particularly, amongst photographers. Scitex makes no
specific claims about the longevity of Iris prints; the process was
invented for short-term proofs for prepress applications, and the useful
lifetime of an Iris print is widely regarded to be ONE SINGLE viewing,
fresh off the printer, before approving the print for further production.
Iris prints are not made with inks, to use the specific technical
application of the term. They are dyes, not inks. These dyes contain salts
to change their electical conductivity, a requirement of the deflection
mechanism (its a long story, hard to explain. For specialists with a
physics background, the Iris inks operate on much the same physics as the
classic "Milliken Oil Drop Experiment". Email me privately if you need more
techie details.) Anyway, to make a long story short, Iris dyes contain
salts which will accelerate oxidization. The only way to completely prevent
this would be to store the prints in a 100% inert gas environment. This is
obviously impractical.
The miniscule amount of dyes used in inkjet prints does not lend itself to
archival properties. Iris prints are best at the subtleties of color
reproduction at the light end of the scale. I recall many hours spent
recalibrating my Iris printer to produce accurate colors at total ink
coverages of less than 10% (thats 10% ink coverage out of 400% total, cyan
magenta yellow black). These light colors will show more serious color
shifts than saturated colors, when fading does occur.
Furthermore, in general, CMYK printing just does not have the properties
needed for stable archival prints. In particular, the Magenta dye is
particularly weak. How many times have you seen a sun-faded color poster
with an overall sickly greenish-blue color, since its magenta inks have
faded away? This is a generic problem of all CMYK processes. No wonder that
fine-artists have generally avoided CMYK processes. It is used primarily
for inexpensive commercial work (magazines, etc) and not for long-term
uses.
"Archival" is a word that has many meanings to many people. Printing an
Iris print on archival paper is NOT an archival print. Its the same
unstable inks on an archival substrate. Putting a special UV protective
coating over an Iris print will not make it archival either. Iris prints
have only been in existence for about 10 years. The only thing we can say,
at this time, is that SOME iris prints have survived after a mere 10 years.
On the other hand, archival photographic processes have been in existence
for over 150 years, we know these processes will last at LEAST 150 years,
probably much longer. Nobody is making any such predictions about Iris
prints.
Many Iris studios are making technical advances in inks and protective
coatings, however these are currently not capable of making a print that is
considered archival. The only scientific studies showing positive archival
qualities have been funded by people who have a vested interest in proving
Iris prints are archival. Consider the source of this information. Is
someone going to make a bundle of money if they can convince you that this
Iris print that cost them $1.03 in materials is equally as archival as a
fine-art lithograph that cost weeks of effort and hundreds of dollars just
to produce the first print of an edition? Who benefits? Not the artists, it
is the commercial Iris operators. If they can convince you that Iris prints
are archival, they will make a huge profit. If they are NOT archival, its
just another scam. It is no wonder that Iris owners seek to hide their
product under a fancy pseudo-scholarly "giclee" term. If its french, and
sounds like art historians would use the term, it MUST be REAL art, eh? Not
really. Its just an Iris print. But if they called it an Iris print, or an
ink-jet print, nobody would buy it, because everyone knows that inkjet
prints aren't archival.
Anyone who wants to preserve a digital image for their heirs faces an
interesting set of problems. Current archival photographic processes can be
adopted for digital works, but it is expensive and difficult, and is a job
best left to archival fine-art specialists. Or you could preserve the
digital data, and perhaps if the print fades, you could just make a fresh
new one, with the newest latest technology of the time. Each digital print
is as good as the original. However, this also raises an interesting
problem. Many digital storage media have their own archival problems. Even
CD-Rom optical storage, one of the most stable media known, is now under
suspicion of only having a 30-50 year maximum lifetime. And even if you
could preserve a CDRom for 30 years, will there be a machine available in
30 years that can read it? And what about the Operating System? I worry
about issues like this. A year or two ago, I helped someone produce his
filmmaking MFA thesis on a Mac CDRom. It was written using under MacOS 7.5
with Apple Media Tool and has extensive use of Quicktime video clips. Apple
Media Tool is rumored to be a dead product, with no further development
coming. Can his MFA thesis run on future Macs? It might not. Perhaps he
should have submitted a CPU capable of running his software, for the
benefit of future generations who want to see his thesis. This approach is
called "Pickling".. Apple is rumored to have old CPUs in long-term mothball
storage. Storing hardware in archival conditions is quite difficult, for a
whole new set of technical problems which I will not get into. Perhaps we
should store a set of chip fabrication masks, so dead chips could be
remanufactured, if needed. But in 30 years, will a chip fabrication factory
be available that can produce obsolete chips on obsolete equipment? Perhaps
we should put an entire chip fabrication plant in mothball storage too. Ah,
there is no end to this problem...
Information is fleeting, and well-preserved ancient artworks are rare. I
don't see this changing radically in the future. I hope for more
advancements in this area, but the ravages of time are relentless. We
cannot expect immortality, not for ourselves, nor for our works. We can
aspire, and perhaps the spirit of our works will live beyond ourselves, but
perhaps not intact, not in its present form. Such is the mortal condition.
But for those of use who have a rare glimpse of a well preserved antiquity,
ah, what bliss to have a fleeting window into the past! We cannot, alas,
make new history, what has been lost cannot be recaptured. But let us
endeavor to make our available to future generations, and minimize the
loss, so they may share our vision, if even through a cloudy window into
antiquity.
| Charles Eicher |
| -=- |
| cei...@inav.net |
Sanky RAINE
a.bucsay <a.bu...@ix.netcom.com> a écrit le 12-Jan-98 20:57:14 sur 'rec.arts.fine' :
> I would be most interested in hearing opinions from the group regarding the
> longevity of digital collages, giclees etc. Some folks seem to think they
> are not archival ... which I assume to mean that they will not remain the
> same during the passing of significant amounts of time. What about the
> pigments in the inks used by the IRIS and Epson printers? What scientific
> studies has anyone out there read regarding the color fastness of these
> inks? Are the inks non-reactive (chemically with the ground) in nature?
> Could a person buy a giclee print with the realistic assumption that it
> would make a good family heirloom?
and what about color photocopies?
Jerry
Thank you for the information, it makes a lot of sense. Do you know if
the same applies to a colored xerox?
Jerry
Andrew Werby
> I would be most interested in hearing opinions from the group regarding the
> longevity of digital collages, giclees etc. Some folks seem to think they
> are not archival ... which I assume to mean that they will not remain the
> same during the passing of significant amounts of time. What about the
> pigments in the inks used by the IRIS and Epson printers?
[The dyes used in most ink-jet printers, including Epson's and Iris/giclee,
are inherently unstable, according to everything I've read on the subject.
Even if kept in total darkness, they will apparently degrade in time,
although not as quickly as if exposed to light. After receiving complaints,
Iris withdrew their "archival" inks from the market. Anti- UV coatings have
not been shown to be effective. But this does not mean that digital art
itself is unstable, just the ink or dye-sets usually used to print it out.
It is possible to generate a slide or negative from the digital file and
produce
an archival photograph, or a silkscreen print, or an etching using stable
pigment-based inks. One can even use the digital image to produce a stencil
and blast it into the surface of a stone. So it really comes down to the
specific method of reproduction used.]
What scientific
> studies has anyone out there read regarding the color fastness of these
> inks?
[There have been some, but I can't remember the name of the book that summarized
these findings- it was thick and expensive though. It did say that the color
toners used in laser printers and copiers were better than the ink-jet's, but
still far short of archival.]
Are the inks non-reactive (chemically with the ground) in nature?
[I doubt it.]
> Could a person buy a giclee print with the realistic assumption that it
> would make a good family heirloom?
[No, enjoy it while you can.]
UNITED ARTWORKS- SCULPTURE AND MORE
http://users.lanminds.com/~drewid
Useful Resources, Technical Tips
and Custom Art in Many Media
a.bucsay
Are there folks out there who would like to learn more about the chemistry
of the inks used in printers?
Trickywoo
I had a traditional photography lecturer who was always telling us that
digital photograhpy would never take over traditional photography because
it was not archival. A normal CD lasts for, I think it was about 50years
(dont quote me on that) and a gold CD about 80years.... but.... doesn't a
photograph last that long. After that amount of time it loses its colour
and fades, but with digital art, well.... you could always transfer your
images to a newer CD couldn't you? You could do that again and again and as
technology improves, your images would be safer.
Actual PRINTED images would fade like photographs... but you have the
advantage of having the original computer image around to do other copys
off.... right?
As for the technical side, I dont know.... but worth looking into.
Especially for a digital artist like me. Let me know what you find.
<Pho...@hemlock.newcastle.edu.au>
a.bucsay <a.bu...@ix.netcom.com> wrote in article
<01bd1f94$4f3c1380$3749bacd@violet>...
> I would be most interested in hearing opinions from the group regarding
the
> longevity of digital collages, giclees etc. Some folks seem to think
they
> are not archival ... which I assume to mean that they will not remain the
> same during the passing of significant amounts of time. What about the
> pigments in the inks used by the IRIS and Epson printers? What
scientific
> studies has anyone out there read regarding the color fastness of these
> inks? Are the inks non-reactive (chemically with the ground) in nature?