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THE NEW YORK TIMES, FRIDAY, AUGUST 26, 1983
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The New York Times/Larry C. Morris
Howardina Pindell sketched this month's display in Times Square; Curtis King programmed it into the computer.

Electronic Sign Puts Art Into Times Sq.
Continued from Page B1
n't show up on the sign," he said. "I told him the resolution wasn't precise enough for buttons."
 Miss Pindell, an associate professor of art at the State University of New York College at Stony Brook, who has had works exhibited at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Whitney Museum of American Art and the Museum of Modern Art, met regularly with the computer man beginning early last month. She had sketched drawings for an antiwar theme that started with an image of a Japanese warrior and ended with a mushroom cloud.
There were many problems. First, it was too long for the 35-second format. This was a new problem for Miss Pindell. Painters are not used to being edited for time.

'Not Too Pretty'
Nor could she get her explosion the way she wanted it. The first version was too colorful.
 "I want it to look atomic," she explained to Mr. King. "But I don't want it to look too pretty."
 Mr. King sympathized. He knew how trying explosions could be. "That's a problem," he said. "It's hard to make explosions look like bad things."
 Johnny (Crash) Matos, a subway graffiti artist, had been easier on this point. He was willing to go along with a train explosion filled with bright colors and flying debris in reds and blues. However, Mr. King takes artists on their own terms, and he was discreet enough not to mention Mr. Matos to Miss Pendell, who was firm about removing the color from her explosion.
Getting the Red Out
The computer man pressed the UNLOCK key and then the RED key, and all the red was gone.
"Oh, oh, oh." Miss Pendell said.
The computer flashed the words, "Which file?" Mr. King typed, "MUSH," and the image of the mushroom cloud popped on the screen in black and white, green and blue.
"Oh, oh, oh," Miss Pindell said. But she was still not satisfied with her explosion. For an hour and a half, the two creators went back and forth, discussing how much color a good explosion needed, if it needed any at all.
At one point Miss Pindell was ready to settle for the image on the screen."Actually, it doesn't bother me like that," she said.
But Mr. King could tell it really did. "The way it is right there?" he asked. Miss Pindell conceded she was just being kind, and they began experimenting again.
Then, at the darkest moment, by accident, Mr. King pressed a button that interchanged the black-and-white version of the explosion with  its negative image.
"That's it," the artist said.
"That's it," the computer man said. And it was.
The work was ready right on time for its Aug. 15 debut, as Mr. King had promised.
In the end, the artist said she was pleased. "Once I got the feel of it, it was a very enjoyable experience, working with the computer," she said. "Though certainly we had our moments."
In the end, the computer man said he, too, was pleased. "They're all nice people, and at first I was very willing to indulge them. Then we'd run over the deadline, and that was a big hassle. So this year, I was firm. I found I had to put my foot down with these artists."