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\F0\CEdith Smith
\CComputer Assisted and Inspired Prints

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


\C---- The exhibit has been extended through June 20. -----