Saturday, July 11, 2009

Heard on the web...

We still hear about good old film. Is film better than digital is it more stable, safer to store etc. Many reply with ridiculous self serving full of themselves artistic reasons while others, and there are many, reply with nerdy technological reasons. The real post that sort of irked me was one where the interlocutor replied that if kept, under a "cool and dry place," film would be a better archival medium as we did not have to keep replicating digital files as new storage medias came out.
MY REPLY WAS THIS:
What you say about cool dry places is in itself chimerical but even if you could find someone who would be able to do so, after you are gone, film begins to age and change from the moment it's manufactured. Black and white film, begins a slow process of "fogging" while stored and the negatives, even stored in a cool dry place, do deteriorate slowly. With color, the problems increase as each layer ages differently. Prints of course are a different matter. I used to print for archives who required so called archival processing so I'm aware of what it entails but all the best efforts lasted just for a time.
Digital? Yes with re copying to new media, we can duplicate the images perfectly as we are only storing a long chain of numbers that can be replicated perfectly. That's the beauty of it. You say 100 years for the cool dry place. I say forever for digital.
We have true archival files now, but as with anything we like, we must put some work into them.
But what I really detested about film was reciprocity failure.
And for all the "artistic, soulful reasons" for film, I believe it's all bebatable.
--What do you think? Am I off my rocker?

5 comments:

  1. First, Rocco I would prefer that you include something of a citation, link, general reference or other pointer to the source of the discussion that inspired this observation as it helps to follow through with something of the background exchange in mind. Apart from what isn’t available for discussion there is much still to muse on in this subject area. Perhaps some few questions first as a backward method to define some terms and context:

    Why do we want something to last forever?

    Is there enough permanence in our world that we as amateur or serious professionals alike should strive for complete static preservation of anything we create?

    Altamira is about as archival as it comes as a sort of human visual record and still this body of work leaves many questions and offers only a small sliver of insight into the culture of the people that created the art. Will our persevered visionary records be interpretable across cultures and the reach of great spans of time?

    What continuum or matrix of ideas is being archived? Toward what achievable goal, apart from having a visual record of sorts, does the storage facilitate how is a process of creativity spawned and fostered if everything is being archived forever?

    Is there nothing more to the image than the medium that collected photons on either film or digital chip?

    What provision is there for the infallible storage of metadata?

    I think that the effect of our striving to prevent change creates the biggest sense of change of all. We are pushing and selecting consciously a portion of work that defines a body of record this cataloguing therefore shapes the interpretation of that time and work when the archive is reviewed. That is simply a corruption of the visionary quest and spirit of aesthetic inquiry that lead to the creation of the work in the first place. Where our focus should therefore be directed? Instead I offer that we are wasting energy worrying and debating over archiving details and methods when instead the act of observation and creations beckons our attentions.

    Consider this example where we are scanning images from film to be stored on a digital archive. When we examine the film in the analog fashion we see that there is a continuum or a matrix to the approach that was brought to bear and recorded on the length of the film strip. This is best reviewed say with a contact sheet that demonstrates something of the photographer’s approach and insight into the subject matter as well as a convenient overview of the 36 exposure film strip. If we should scan the individual images the archive looses context, some meaning and even power as a statement and document. If provenance is important the entire body of a work needs to be preserved and not just single images. It is important to preserve the integrity and order of the full effort, or we should stop wasting film and time and resort to watching more TV and having our past be distilled for us.

    Francisco Goya comes to mind here as an example of where a vortex of archiving information lies well within reach and interpretation on his canvases. Certainly it can be supported that Goya is the last of the Old Masters and the first of the Moderns and in his style and technique we well see the influence of great painters of the Renaissance and the Baroque and later see the “shoulders” of sorts that French Impressionism and Post Impressionism has stood upon. His archiving (canvases if you will) is best utilized as an incomplete work and something of a conundrum when you look deeply and learn many mysteries and enigmas. These efforts to see deeply develop new and more interesting ideas that lead to more canvases of your own. Also, I think too that Werner Heisenberg and the uncertainty principle could offer something of an argumentative counterpoint to a muster of strong belief that we digital age photographers are able to pin down anything seriously significant at all and burn to optical storage media.

    You’re not off your rocker yet.

    FC

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  2. I forgot to mention Bonnard. When I saw the exhibition in ’98 at MOMA it became very obvious how Bonnard drew from photograph studies for some canvases. Here is a demonstrated method that worked through an archive, a temporary example, which offered a synthesis and synergy for an aesthetic that demanded the organization of the resources to allow the painting effort to be successful. His use and application of color is still unrivaled by anything that Velvia 50 could offer or the most hell bent high pass Pshop filter aficionado with the saturation pegged. No storage technology can record and archive the effect and crescendo that Bonnard’s imagination derived from the temporary archive tools that he worked with. This note is only a submission of an observation as many observers at the exhibition were not well comforted by Bonnard’s body of work and thought less that he was something of a hack with perspective all twisted and other technical interpretive details not in line with the perception of what a modern master should be capable of as a draughtsman. It seems that what insight that Bonnard cultivated and reached for also included some measure of the handling of colour. The mensuration of the idea of colour changes completely the definitions and the thing itself; in turn this polarization spurs greater effort to understand paths of insight sometimes entirely over reaching from the limitations of the temporary archive resource.

    FC

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  3. Fernando, thank you for your most erudite and informative reply on film. In the future I will give a link. This however was from a reply to a post on DPREVIEW that asked if anyone still used film. One of the replies stated that film was more archival. This reply was what set me off. You are right in saying that we expect things to last forever. Some do achieve some sort of immortality for a time, however. But as you know everyone who takes a photo believes that it's a work of art That should be preserved for the ages. I really do not take myself so seriously to believe that my work will or even should. Of course this opens up a philosophical can of worms that is really not the scope of the blog but we can address anyway.
    Again thanks for looking and taking the time to reply. It's a pleasure "conversing" with an intelligent person. I do not know anyone who can "marry" the uncertainty principle of quantum mechanics with art. Superb indeed!
    RG

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  4. Off your rocker? Is that a rhetorical question?

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