wallace berman

[or: dec 27, 2016] a post that never finished began:
groups. goals. the single or simple. matters of influence(s) culture or conceit

the book stack 2016
1 provoke
2 studio
3 semina culture. TU
4 in a box Wed 28th
5 emanations Th
6 challenging art Fri 30th
7 diane arbus revelations Sa
8 flower... Su Jan 1
9 good 70s Mon Jan 2
Seems it was a planned series of posts... much collected references, along with short impressions. Berman's Semina Culture seems to have been assigned a Tuesday date. Wonder why I never finished the set.

Wallace Berman,(February 18, 1926 – February 18, 1976 [50]. Key terms in his work: Semina, a mail art publication published between 1955 and 1964, and Aleph, his long term film making project. It runs only 6 minutes, but took him from 1958 til 1976 to make. Stan Brackhage salvaged the 8mm film with a conversion to 16mm to be shown.

He appeared in Easy Rider (1969). Berman died on his 50th birthday, a prediction from childhood. He was killed by a drunk driver.

Exhibitions:

see: refresher handmade

this isn’t tuesday: 2,13 -26

beyond information ordering… a midden. I intend to find out. Bits from about the place… promising not to promise too much.

behind the scenes. I am behind in my postings. Many too many drafts.

digital enlarges beyond the page.

amateurs have more restrictions than professionals; they impose more rules upon themself and other amateurs. this is particularly true amongst Artists, amongst photographers and other self described creatives . Setting standards of thought, by way of controlled dictionaries. A -graph or a -gram. What do you insist others call it>

  • –graph[ French -graphe, from Late Latin -graphus, from Greek -graphos, from praphein, to write
  • –gram [ Greek -gramma, from gramma, letter
  • Sometimes a photograph creates a photogram. often, I called them[dye transfers] glyphs[from carving]

like all social functioning, the art world is not singular.

More closures[around the artworld]:

  • London’s Stephen Friedman Gallery Closes for Good amid Insolvency Proceedings
  • The Centre for Contemporary Arts in Glasgow will shut down after thirty-three years, with all staff losing their jobs. Funding withdrawals, operational deficits, labor disputes, and political protests compounded pandemic-era setbacks.

–/James L. Enyeart, the second director of the CCP from 1977 to 1989, died in Santa Fe, New Mexico, on November 28, 2025. He was 82.

This Is Spinal Tap (1984), The Sure Thing (1985), Stand by Me (1986), The Princess Bride (1987), Misery (1990), and A Few Good Men (1992)….

a year ago the price was $6.79 ..

high achieving adults rarely began as child prodigies .. unfinished sidebar

Obi, N., Kojima, Y., & Shigcmitsu, Y. (1999). Production of superhigh contrast by dyes. The Imaging Science Journal47(1), 43–48. https://doi.org/10.1080/13682199.1999.11736452

GLYCIN Notes:

N-(4-Hydroxyphenyl)glycine (glycin) is synthesized by reacting p-aminophenol with chloroacetic acid. This reaction typically occurs in a solvent and results in the formation of glycin, which is then purified. Other less common methods for synthesizing related compounds exist, such as using glyoxylic acid, but the p-aminophenol and chloroacetic acid reaction is the most direct and widely cited route. https://www.google.com.sl/patents/WO1995018093A1

Glycin, if made using pure regents in a clean, precise method, lasts at room temperature for several years. Kodak brand glycin, “Kodurol”, [alt, Athenon]is still light color after 40 years in storage. Glycin which lasts mere months is less pure. https://pubchem.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/compound/N-_4-Hydroxyphenyl_glycine#section=FTIR-Spectra


John Conway … mathematician… “Game of Life” is how most knew him

college systems provide acess to AI as regular feature for text ..

is there a difference between the paid form of agent? Impulse response answers, YES. While correct, it is incomplete since the full answer is in what the diff is —

Free, tracks you, saving responses as well as datasets. The paid versions assert they do not track nor store your data. In addition, they promise your data can’t leak ..

typical price levels seem like discount club member tiers, one such:

Free, $20/month, $200/month. At different prices, different tracking or “prompt-leak” as the newest term on the software stack.

callier confusion

Intelligent individuals learn from every thing and every one; average people, from their experiences. The stupid already have all the answers.”  ― Socrates

one of the optiquals… using light for means, by means other than image-formed pattern. Sometimes the H&D curve is more bendable than others. More details follow…

:the mysterious Q is called upon from the shadows as explanation for almost any effect. What does it explain? Do you use it… that other light; that other exposure summation. Think weeding … sometimes it makes tea.

Photography is a simplified form of drawing; let the thing draw itself.. the law, rather, the principle of exposure holds for most of the time. Like all real things the exposure rule varies. This variance provides confusion or useful options, even if you don’t know the names of the various effects. Reject before using is a rule of turds. Well known, widely influential resources gain stature by passing along their approach; their dictionary, complete with conceptual restrictions takes hold.

if not controlled, at least understood — edge of distinction —

More importantly, how can you use exposure effects in control of the image. How to manage the different points of the curves. Tone-bending, by using effects discovered and refined by early photographers building out the field of light sensitive surfaces.

Flash and Burn characteristics of the enlarger. The slide-set introduces the concepts of controlling some of the HD shape by means of altering single contrast emulsions, such as films. All dye labs had full understanding of these principles. Some of the information carried over into the fixed grade BW darkrooms.

patent simmon
Early darkroom lamphead patent for a condenser enlarger. 1948

Flare up. The other words, effects found upon deeper reading into the the literature of exposing silver materials. If you were a designer of systems, or an extremely inventive user, these terms, often named after their initial discoverer, will take you along the full path of the characteristic curve; enough so, that you could begin to design exposure making and measuring systems.

Flare: The worst element in photography. The projected light that escapes around the image and causes fog and distortion of the original image. — Bob Pace.

  • MEES. c. E.: The Theory of the Photographic Process, p. 849; Macmillan. New York (1945):
  • and GOETZ, A., BROWN, F. W.: Light Scattering and the Graininess of Photographic Emulsions, J. Soc. Mot. Pict. Engrs., 39; 375 (1942).
  • SMETHURST, P. C.: Scattered Light, Image Gradation, and Surface Treated Lenses; Brit. J. Photogr., 88; 427, 434 (1941).
  • G. Kornfeld, “The Herschel Effect and the Structure and Stability of the Photographic Latent Image*,” J. Opt. Soc. Am. 39, 490-494 (1949).
  • Zachoval, L. A contribution to the theory of some photographic effects. Czech J Phys 8, 214–217 (1958). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF01603694

uses.. filed borders to introduce gate-flare : edge of framing gate induced flare .

Additional References

Using means knowing the difference between a silver contact and silver projected image in common darkroom printing. Dye-transfer is BW made complex by the number of steps; permutations seemingly beyond understanding. We learned the difference between silver testing and color, dye testing. The AIM, targets used had effects that could confuse ones initial learning — without luck, or well directed starting information it could seem a fools burden… pushing snowballs up a volcano.

Become alert to difference in response between instrument reading and material action: measurement may not predict fully, accurately. What you measure may not be what you get — refine, or re-define. Dyes aren’t silver; this meant that what we tested changed by stage of the process; was it silver, or dye stage material.

Applications and Implications —

exposing adox lupex : https://www.adox.de/Technical_Informations/TA_LUPEX(EN).pdf

reading adox contrast and understanding: http://www.adox.de/Technical_Informations/MCC_Datasheet.pdf

AN: splasboard processes

zeiss paper: https://lenspire.zeiss.com/photo/app/uploads/2018/12/en_About-the-reduction-of-reflections-of-camera-lenses.pdf