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00400	\F3\CEdith Smith
00450	\CComputer Assisted and Inspired Prints
00700	
02900		Artist Edith Smith presents an exhibit of computer assisted
03000	and computer inspired prints from May 14 through June 6.  The etchings,
03100	lithographs, and monotypes comprising the show depict CCRMA, its
03200	hardware, its people, and its advanced technology.
03300	 
03400		The computer assisted etchings utilize edge-finding programs and
03500	digital distortions of computer directed video imagery translated into
03600	fine prints through photo-sensitive etching processes.  The graphic
03700	programs are of two types:  edge-finder programs; dot matrix programs
03800	for letter-type.  In both programs a T.V. camera directed by a PDP-10
03900	computer shoots art work, objects, or type fonts.  In the edge finding
04000	program the camera conveys dark-light patterns usually seen on T.V.
04100	screens to the computer memory -- thus digitizing the image.  From
04200	complex formal information the program finds places of maximum
04300	contrast that it can interpret as "edges."  The output of the program
04400	is stored as hundreds of individual short line segments which are 
04500	produced as line drawing by the computer-operated plotter.
04600	 
04700		As visual data are expressed in numbers, distortions of the
04800	image can be effected by applying different multiplying, dividing,
04900	adding, or subtracting factors to the numbers.  The resulting
05000	metamorphoses of the images by the computer are linear, and hence
05100	natural to etching; they are transformed by elongation; turned
05200	inside out, serialized, or curved in ways never before visualized.
05300	Through contact photography, the image or printed text is transferred
05400	to a photo-sensitive etching plate, which is bitten in nitric acid and
05500	printed on an etching press.
05600	 
05700		The mezzotints in the exhibit were developed by the artist
05800	in Paris from drawings made at CCRMA (then the A.I. lab) in 1975, 1976,
05900	1978, and 1979.  This is a painstaking hand process in rocking with a
06000	rocker and scraping with a scraper on a copper plate.  The plate is
06100	roughed-up all over in a pattern to produce black in printing;
06200	subsequently, it is scraped to develop middle tones of greys; and 
06300	burnished to reclaim a surface which prints white.  Few printmakers in
06400	the U.S.A. know the intricacies of this technique, a popular reproduction
06500	method in England and France up until the rise of lithography in the
06600	19th century; and interesting today as a nearly "lost art;" one
06700	beautiful in its deep, rich, velvet tones.
06800	 
06900		Edith Smith is a Palo Alto painter and printmaker who has
07000	exhibited locally at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, the Palo
07100	Alto Cultural Center, Dominican College; in New York at the Artist's
07200	Gallery and the Whitney Museum of American Art; in Paris at the 
07300	Gallery Colette Allendy; in Brussels at the Galerie Dautzenberg.
07400	She is an Instructor of Printmaking at Foothill College, Los Altos Hills.