Vatican 2.0--- Being Digital in Rome

Rome, city of 1001 cliches-

I feel I have lived everyone of them in 24 hours.

When in Rome do as the Romans do.

Had a frenetic tour of the mind blowing Sistine Chapel and the home of the Pope, Vatican City; the best stadium ever bulit-The pedal to the metal Gladiator's Coliseum, The Spanish Steps, and Trevi Fountian.

All roads lead to Rome.

Ancient Rome is old--I hope I look this good when I am over 1000 years old!

Rome wasn’t built in a day.

Fake it till you make it-Digital Art

The Russian Mafia is so much more forgiving than the Italian. While I was in The Sistine Chapal, the 800 lb gorillas went mental over flash photography. (Protecting the orginals.) Yet while in the Hermitage in ST Petersburg Russia last month, the windows were open, the elements, the sun and mist came in contact with Rembrandts, Picassos. I went right up to Van Goughs and could have touched them, as most were without glass.

Yet on the 15 Euro, two hour tour to get there, we were able to point and shoot at will. Then it occured to me, these were all replicas, copies we were photographing.

The DNA of Michelangelo is that he can never go out of print.The copy is better than the original as my analog eyes see a digital world.

The process is called Giclée, inkjet-based digital print used as fine art. NASA space photography first developed it for satelite imaging, and then in the early 1980's, Graham Nash from CSNY began expermenting with paint in a dot matrix printer(IRIS Graphics 3047) See wikipedia Graham Nash/Nash Editions, the first ever digital fine-art printing studio... and the rest is history. WTF?