00100	\|\\M0BASL30;\M1BASI30;\M2NGR40;\M3NGR25;\M4NGR20;\MFSTA200;
00200	\F0\CEdith Smith
00300	\CComputer Assisted and Inspired Prints
00400	
00500	\J	Artist Edith Smith presents an exhibit of computer assisted
00600	and computer inspired prints from May 14 through June 6.  The etchings,
00700	lithographs, and monotypes comprising the show depict CCRMA, its
00800	hardware, its people, and its advanced technology.
00900	 
01000		The computer assisted etchings utilize edge-finding programs and
01100	digital distortions of computer directed video imagery translated into
01200	fine prints through photo-sensitive etching processes.  The graphic
01300	programs are of two types:  edge-finder programs; dot matrix programs
01400	for letter-type.  In both programs a T.V. camera directed by a PDP-10
01500	computer shoots art work, objects, or type fonts.  In the edge finding
01600	program the camera conveys dark-light patterns usually seen on T.V.
01700	screens to the computer memory -- thus digitizing the image.  From
01800	complex formal information the program finds places of maximum
01900	contrast that it can interpret as "edges."  The output of the program
02000	is stored as hundreds of individual short line segments which are 
02100	produced as line drawing by the computer-operated plotter.
02200	 
02300		As visual data are expressed in numbers, distortions of the
02400	image can be effected by applying different multiplying, dividing,
02500	adding, or subtracting factors to the numbers.  The resulting
02600	metamorphoses of the images by the computer are linear, and hence
02700	natural to etching; they are transformed by elongation; turned
02800	inside out, serialized, or curved in ways never before visualized.
02900	Through contact photography, the image or printed text is transferred
03000	to a photo-sensitive etching plate, which is bitten in nitric acid and
03100	printed on an etching press.
03200	 
03300		The mezzotints in the exhibit were developed by the artist
03400	in Paris from drawings made at CCRMA (then the A.I. lab) in 1975, 1976,
03500	1978, and 1979.  This is a painstaking hand process in rocking with a
03600	rocker and scraping with a scraper on a copper plate.  The plate is
03700	roughed-up all over in a pattern to produce black in printing;
03800	subsequently, it is scraped to develop middle tones of greys; and 
03900	burnished to reclaim a surface which prints white.  Few printmakers in
04000	the U.S.A. know the intricacies of this technique, a popular reproduction
04100	method in England and France up until the rise of lithography in the
04200	19th century; and interesting today as a nearly "lost art;" one
04300	beautiful in its deep, rich, velvet tones.
04400	 
04500		Edith Smith is a Palo Alto painter and printmaker who has
04600	exhibited locally at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, the Palo
04700	Alto Cultural Center, Dominican College; in New York at the Artist's
04800	Gallery and the Whitney Museum of American Art; in Paris at the 
04900	Gallery Colette Allendy; in Brussels at the Galerie Dautzenberg.
05000	She is an Instructor of Printmaking at Foothill College, Los Altos Hills.\.
05100	
05200	
05300	\C---- The exhibit has been extended through June 20. -----