Re: Web vs print (was exhibition alt imagery)


Judy Seigel (jseigel@panix.com)
Sat, 13 Feb 1999 23:03:42 -0500 (EST)


On Sat, 13 Feb 1999, Peter Marshall wrote:
>
> Of course there are things that are wrong on the web - and so there are in
> PF - I wrote to you about some of those in the first issue - and in any
> other printed source you can name,

Peter,

Since you raise the point: following your many screensfull of
"corrections" to Issue #1 of Post-Factory, which arrived here almost
before the ink was dry, you wrote: "Your reasons for not putting it on
the Web are so amusingly wrong-headed -- it would be so much better on the
Web". And since your "corrections" seemed (to me at least) nit-picky, if
not questionable and/or obscure, I found myself underwhelmed.

But, please note: In a periodical, corrections, amplifications and
updates can be made almost as quickly as they are on some Web pages (if
not moreso), which is the beauty of a periodical as opposed to a book. For
instance, page 25 of Post-Factory #2 quotes "Feedback." Under the heading
"Relevant Particulars," the editor included what she found your most valid
and interesting point:

It began, "Peter Marshall had another idea about how Vandyke brown
printing got its name." Then followed your citation from Cassell's
Cyclopedia:

Quote:
===========
A photographic process invented by F. Vandyke of the survey of India
Office, Calcutta, and used largely for map printing in British and
colonial Government printing offices.....

The item continued with your comment that,

"I suspect this is where the name comes from -- someone having got the two
mixed up...." and ended with your points about VDB vs. kallitype, with
another reference to Cassell's.

> But putting things on the web doesn't stop people doing other things - it
> just provides alternatives. If some people want to do things other ways as
> well, then that's no problem. Let's try to be positive about things.

By all means. I'm glad you've finally come around to that point of view.
But I myself am too old, haven't got time left in my life to wait for
those nice color pictures on the web to download, which takes longer than
it does to look at them. I could be halfway to 22nd St in the interval to
see the real thing. (Yes, yes, I know not everyone lives a brisk walk
from a 22nd Street, but that's *my* context.)

Even more important, in my experience, the relation of 72 dpi phosphors to
a hand-coated print is about like MacDonald's reconstituted apple dessert
compared to a home-baked high-crust apple pie.

Judy



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