Art, craft, or science?

So what's the business we are in? Art, craft, or science?

I was talking to one of our most capable pressmen the other day: he considers himself working in the field of Graphic Arts. He implied that he is an artist, realizing in the same time that coming across with such a bold statement (himself an artist) would be a weak argument. So he held back, just making a comment of himself as being in the 'Graphic Arts'. Same argument I got today from our ink manager. He thinks he works in arts.

Every day, I wake up (rather late I admit), make some coffee, check my emails, and drive my car to work, organizing my thoughts on the way of what I have to do for the day. Approaching our establishment, I see a gray building erecting where it used to be dairies and fields. And I realize: I work in a damn factory.

So what's wrong with these people? Don't they see the same building I do? Don't they see that there is software counting the number of impressions, their downtime, the color coordinates, the temperature of the fountain solution? Don't they see that 8-color beastie that needs greasing every other week?

I was more of an artistic kinf of person back in Greece. I also liked to philosophize about stuff in general. One of the unresolved issues in philoshophy is 'what is art'. Postmodernism theory states that art can be anything. I might be a work of art sitting here right now and typing in these words. Aristotle would stand up and say that art is a form of representation. I like to believe that art is the creation of something nonexistant that we conjure out of our inner thoughts, emotions, or what have you. Unless our pressmen, managers and ink technicians are postmodernists, there is no definition of art that they fit into it.

Are these people disillusioned? I have to go back at work at 11:30 tonight to establish the MEK tolerances for our new UV nonskid coating. Will these people fail to print if I don't? Will the coating come loose after the Asitrade? I bet you that it won't. But what if one of our delivery lamps is off and the energy density falls beyond 60 mJ/cm^2? What if while they are testing it they hit the black at 2.10 density?

I am not a scientist. I would be a scientist if I was in some labs doing research religiously to find the linearities between changes in IFT and C*. I consider myself a technologist or engineer. I apply science in my work. I need concrete data to implement the procedures and technologies needed to quarantee that things happen.

Likewise... these people are not artists. They take 2 to 8 plates every day that carry an image and try to match color.

To match color though... to handle the 8 headed hydra... they need to be craftsmen. They need to check the fountain solution for the particular ink, check their roller settings, their IR, their ink and water balance... and it goes on and on. It's tough. There are times that all the rules that science sets up for them cease to matter. There are times that DE formulas fail to predict color perception. The craftsman has to understand and consider all the variables involved and make a call with the customer waiting in the lounge for the press check.

To conclude: the printing process involves variables that with the current technologies are not adequately measured and when this point is reached, when science fails to provide and answer, craftmanship is needed to make things right.

PS> My old man back in Greece uses his eyeball as a densitometer... and he is succesfull... most of the times

-D