On my wall I have three NW coast tribes numbered silkscreens. I read the certificates on each and all three guaranteed that the screen was destroyed at the end of the run. This got me thinking. The original image was not destroyed but the means of producing the copies was. If more images were to be made the artist would need to make an entirely knew screen. There would be differences in the knew screen. There is no way to avoid it. Thus my images would not look exactly like those images that were created with the new screen. This got me thinking about photography and in particular digital printing. Once a file is made and all of the tweaking done to make it look as nice as possible the author hits the print button and each image that comes out will be exactly like the first. Almost like the silkscreen process (though the screen does break down after a while it definately out lasts the small screening runs I tend to be drawn to.)
SO, here is my question about the limited editions.
Would digital printers be willing to destroy or delete their file after printing a run of say 100 images? By doing this they would ensure that, if they made a second run it would not be exactly the same as they would have to go in and tweak the image again from the master scan file, or rescan the image again all together thus going through all of the creative printing process again. In some cases I have read about people putting a hundred or more hours into this part of the work. By deleting their file they delete this work ad would be looking at doing it again if they wanted to run it a second time. To me this would make editions self limiting, as people would not be willing to go through the process again.
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