On Limited Editions (1998) | Hacker News Reader

On Limited Editions (1998)

woodblock.com

54 pointswallflower24 comments

Whenever I go to an art or craft fair, I’m struck by the feeling that in a different world there would be a market for ‘artisanal software’ - with varying ratios of utility vs. aesthetics as the other arts and crafts have - and with independent software craftspeople selling interesting apps.

I think I would enjoy being a software craftsperson.

That's exactly what I thought FOSS would lead to (at least when I was naive and young). I thought the freedom that comes with FOSS would result in it tailor made software for people and businesses that are modified in just the right way to suit their usage. I knew it was a long shot but I had a lot of hope. "Webservices"/the internet changed the trajectory quite a bit. I'm not talking about the likes of businesses like Amazon, but rather apps like GMail, that very easily outpaced what you can do in a measly desktop computer - not to mention the issues of saving, syncing and backing up data that was never figured out/made easy on the desktop.

The closest I got to enjoy this was the various Greasemonkey scripts.

Mark Bernstein has written a bit about this. He used to call it "neovictorian computing" but now uses the same "artisanal software" term, e.g.: https://www.markbernstein.org/NeoVictorian.html

"Artisanal software" is what we call our various piles of tech debt-ridden legacy code

It has knots and smells like patchouli

Yeah, that seems close to the kind of culture I was thinking of.

Technology currently lacks an aesthetic in my opinion. I think for a craft to exist the working of the material must have aesthetic.

I know that both hardware and software have aesthetics but I believe for the most part those aesthetics aren't used. I believe this is due to being in the early stage of digital system creation.

Double entry book keeping be expressed in hardware I think could be really beautiful which is what I hope Tohands from the earlier post develops into.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38599270

You might be able to say this exists, to an extent, through hardware pairing (like the Teenage Engineering products or the Playdate they worked on). The woodblock prints from TFA are nothing without the specially-chosen paper they are imprinted onto as a way of being transported and displayed; perhaps software is the carefully-arranged ink.

That’s a good point, there is more hardware like this - though those are more like ‘mass-market’ or ‘commercial’ art than the kind of ‘art and craft fair’ stuff I was thinking of (think custom woodworking, limited-run prints, local photography, local watercolors - even things like pet portraits).

In the hardware world, I guess you could also make an argument that stuff like https://nixieshop.com, https://www.vestaboard.com, or https://www.traintrackr.io is nearing this.

I have seen real small-run ‘artisan’ made clocks at local art fairs, which I guess could be MCU based.

Maybe I should make some interesting clocks or displays and try getting a stall at the next craft fair nearby...

I think we maybe thinking along the same lines. I'm setting up a small run manufacturing facility with a few ideas that touch on technology.

I think the most important idea is that smaller circuits is not the end all and be all. There is a great opportunity in making larger circuits.

I plan to develop larger circuits that are embedded in laminates. The second step is would be a parametric set of appliances that can be ordered from a catalog to suit one's specific needs.

> Whenever I go to an art or craft fair, I’m struck by the feeling that in a different world there would be a market for ‘artisanal software’ - with varying ratios of utility vs. aesthetics as the other arts and crafts have - and with independent software craftspeople selling interesting apps.

I recently watched the 5 hour cut of Until the End of the World (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Until_the_End_of_the_World), which is an early 90s movie set "20 Minutes into the Future" (https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/TwentyMinutesInt...).

Some scenes depict some interesting software that might be kind of like what you're talking about, though it's probably just a case of a "Viewer Friendly Interface" (https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/ViewerFriendlyIn...). Still really entertaining, though.

I commissioned a guy to make a small game for me last week, it can be just like working with any other artist/individual business

the unfortunate reality is that an hour of software labor doesn't go far, and software labor is super expensive

Yes, this is the key issue. It's too expensive to hire me or another experienced software engineer to do customization (except...). And doing anything significant takes me more than a few hours. There's just no market segment for me, an infrastructure engineer to help do something for even $1000.

But I do think there is a possibility of paying for a custom api or something that connects up pieces of other apps (an app build, phone or ui) - it's not that they are doing something less worthwhile, it's that I think integrating a few existing things in an existing way can with new ui elements, pics, style can yield something useful and pleasing with "just" a few hours of effort.

Back in the dawn of time, if you had a pc, you had a modem, and there were plenty of different terminal programs (that started up the modem for a call to a BBS usually), and implemented one or a variety of different terminals or bbs ui packages. I recall there were certain kind of enthusiast ones, where you could get a new feature added by paying the author $50. Maybe you wanted it to retry calls some number of times, or add somenew protocol to transfer something.

Linear.

This made me to lookup Samorost again - initially a flash based adventure and puzzle game.

I was at a university print fair recently. The numbering, edition numbering, etc. was all over the place. There was no standard. It was confusing for me, as a buyer who really isn't a collector and connected to this stuff. It didn't stop me (or others) from buying a few things though. Prices weren't tied to edition size, and I didn't overhear any buyers asking about this stuff anyway. Yeah, this was the low end of the market, but great art still speaks for itself and will sell regardless of if there's a couple hundred or an (effectively) unlimited amount of them in the world.

As an aside, I get annoyed when I try to buy something limited online & it sells out instantly and shows up on ebay. Stuff like that makes no sense to set a hard limit for since artists are probably leaving money on the table (they could either raise their prices or produce more). A timed release would be nice in these cases, but quality printing is a skill and I get that an artist can't always leave the number they're committed to make to chance like that...

Some people want to create. Some people want to consume. Some people want to collect. Sometimes consumables become collectible (Baseball cards). Sometimes collectibles become consumable (Mona Lisa postcards). Creators are allowed to decide who their market is and adjust as they see fit.

> When people in other fields try tricks like this, they are castigated by society, and perhaps even find themselves in trouble with the law.

What would be examples for those fields? I'm kind of stuck with thinking about collectibles.

I was trying to think of this as well. I think recently there's the great example of NFTs, but in 1998, I think that was around the era Beanie Babies collapsed in part from the speculation/collectible editions and maybe the Baseball Card collapse in the late 90s?

https://allvintagecards.com/sports-card-market-crash-90s/

And maybe in general, at that point, a lot of limited editions existed but were somewhat tacky and obvious, versus naturally limited or collectible items. But I do think around this time we saw a few collectible items go overboard in trying to push the phenomena as far as it could go.

I think the term to search for here is usually "price fixing" and maybe "price gouging". Usually artificial scarcity is used to raise prices. Think cartels, monopolies, Da Beers diamond artificial scarcity, drug companies hiking prices.

I also vaguely recall some fashion brands destroying products that haven't been sold. Probably more controversial if you have to kill an animal to create the product.

Similarly other stores, like grocery stores, throw out or destroy unsold goods.

Some of these are easier to rationalize than others, but I think all have generated some notable level of hate from society.

But they keep on doing it, so maybe it's worth it.

There's also Cryptocurrency and NFTs to consider.

Edit: Adjusting my tone a bit: I do think that society has stopped at least some price fixing. Here is a quote from Wikipedia:

> The lysine cartel was the first successful prosecution of an international cartel by the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) in more than 40 years. Since then, the DOJ has discovered and successfully prosecuted nearly 20 international cartels.

Diamonds?

Interesting that several of the works I have collected that mean the most to me are monoprints. With this form the material for printing is assembled only once and may include items that may be transformed by the printing process. Sounds like this person is not familiar with monoprints as a format.

Uh, I'm sure the artist has heard of monoprints. The article makes it pretty clear that they like doing woodblock prints.

Meh. Each to their own. There is some "value" in knowing that you own something that is not mass produced. In some aspects, each additional print doesn't affect the utility of any of the others. After all, it looks the same hanging on your wall.

But there is a difference. Using an extreme example, what if the print you hang on your wall is also hanging in every single Starbucks? It will detract from your experience because you'll think of Starbucks when you look at it. No one will marvel at your good taste, or ask where you found it. People might even look at you strangely.

I'm not saying all unnumbered prints are going to be this extreme, and the "value" described is logical. But hopefully this contrived example can demonstrate that there is an loss of value when each additional print is made (at least for a large percentage of the population).

If you're the sort of person that this doesn't make sense to, you needn't be swayed by this thinking. More power to you. But let's not pretend the practice is dishonest or perversive. And if your selling one print of an unlimited run, don't be surprised if people don't want to spend as much.

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