Please share your knowledge of ASCII Art History-
The first time you saw it, used it... It's history as you know it.
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Comments:
\\||/// o-o `/. ' `=>, `-...sorry -- it didn't format correctly. i'm trying your advice from an earlier entry =;-) ---xylah
Comments:
\\||////
o-o'
`/. '
`=>,
`-
...I'm new to the ascii art scene, but I've been
using it for years in email and such. I'm doing
an ascii comic using the extra mac characters
and a graphics prog to rotate, resize, etc -- so
it's not strictly ascii, but rather in the spirit of. I
love all the art I've been seeing in on your site
and others, as well as the independence and
global nature of the scene.
Thanx for a beautiful and informative site!¡!
--- xylah
Comments:
In college, I used a PDP 8/S computer, and we communicated with it
via a teletype and punched paper tape. At the time, I had a program that
would allow you to input a name or phrase on the keyboard, and it would
appear on the paper tape as a pattern of holes. Hey, quit laughing! That
was the late 60's and it was a real gee whiz then! We also had a few pre-punched
tapes that produced pictures when fed thru the reader. One of the completely
insane night operators for the IBM 1401 dug those up for us. Speaking of
the 1401, there was a program called "Edith" -- anybody remember her? I
also learned to punch cards with words, pictures, or the ultimate -- the
lace card, where you punched out every hole on the card! This worked fine
on the old keypunches that punched each column as you typed it, but the
newer keypunches waited until you finished the 80th column and then punched
the entire card. If there were more than four punches in the same column,
the card would jam and rip, so I had to give up making cute cards. After
graduation (71), I started substitute teaching and met a new kind of art,
the Typewriter Mystery. The typing teachers (the nice ones!) would leave
a page of directions thatlooked like "38sp, 2%, 5sp, 2%, 5sp, 2%" etc.
There were typically 40 to 60 lines per picture, and if you followed the
directions exactly, you got a nice seasonal picture. Simple, but it kept
the little darlings busy for the entire period! I was so fascinated by
the pictures that I bought the entire series of books, seven of them, I
think, and always had one or two mysteries ready just in case I got a typing
class to cover. The original set of books got lost somewhere (probably
to a greedy typing teacher), but J Weston Walsh Publishers used to sell
two sets of pictures. I still have my copies, buried somewhere in the incredible
accumulation of junk from 29 years of teaching! I did use them with a computer
class when I was teaching the TAB and SPC functions in BASIC. Not quite
ASCII, but fun! And it kept *my* little darlings busy for the whole period,
too!
Comments:
interesting page.. we were doing research for our project (ascii/video)
and found it very informative..
( Joan's note: Please share your research
when it is finished. I'd love to see what else you have
come up with! And please, feel free to
share my URL with others.)
Comments:
I think that when Microsoft stated that ASCII art is dead didn't take
into account the explosion (at least in Italy) of GSM messaging with portable
telephones. This way of communicating is preponderant, and a lot of people
discovered the ASCII way of expr ssing themselvs. Michele Cerulli
Comments:
I remember going to IBM headquarters in NYC in the late 60's with a
school group, and having a technician type in our names, and having our
names be printed out on a big piece of paper, where each letter was made
up of teh same smaller letters (i.e. the l tter "H" was made up of hundreds
of smaller H's, "A" was made up of hundreds of smaller smaller A's, etc.).
Seemed like alchemy to a 7 year old!
( Joan's note: Awesome -- I would've felt
the same way!)
Comments:
Great site! Very informative. LOSE THE MUSIC from the pages. That was
annoying and loud and a real bummer to an otherwise cool site.
( Joan's note: Some people like the music.
I've tried to tie in the music with the theme of each page.
I'm sorry that you did not like it.)
Comments:
During the Korean War and immediate post-war years of the mid-1950s,
teletype machines were electromechanical typewriters used by the military
to simultaneously send typewritten messages to a number of distant receivers
over telephone or by radio wave transmissions. Newspapers used them extensively,
also. Their respective networks of users were probably contributing predecessors
to the "party-line principle" of the Internet since they functioned much
like Internet Relay Chat (or its variations, such as ICQ) does today. At
Christmastime, the teletype operators sometimes sent Christmas greetings
with "teletyped pictures" that they had created from the keyboards of their
machines. Since teletype paper (usually yellow in color) was loaded on
rolls, there was virtually no l mit to the length of a message. Sometimes,
the "teletyped pictures" were two feet long or greater. Interestingly,
it was suspected that encrypted messages may have been embedded in these
kinds of transmissions at times for the purpose of military securi y. Such
creative teletype messages were just an early form of what is now called
ASCII, typewriter, type or keyboard art today. Back then among the teletype
operators, it was called "teletype art."
Comments:
Ascii art is definately for the creative mind and those who are able
to manipulate the character set they are given to form pictures, much like
the oldskool pixlers are only given 256 colours to create stunning and
sometimes even photorealistic pictures b hand, pixel by pixel.
These people awe me with their innovation. Not just ascii artist, but anyone that was and still is in the scene. The ascii has died down a bit, but you can find a lot more works at http://www.acheron.org/ . If you would like the hirez stuff, check o t http://www.hirez.org/ There are some absolutely fantastic works.
All in all, there's more to the demoscene than just ASCII, if you haven't discover it yet. I'd imagine that you have if you have been at this since 1996. I'm guessing some people who have seen your site have been from the scene. Check it out and inc ude it in your history section. Things like the demoscene are absolutely fabulous in its coheisive bonding in bringing people together. It's a shame things have died down a bit and the push for innovation that reside in it has died a bit. There's still a good chunk left, but times have changed probably. People move on to continue with their lives... I miss them.
To mail me, remove the "y" at the end of my address. I don't like spam.
Comments:
hey jgs. i run a page called the macrohouse. i started it almost a
year ago but no one really knows about it cause like you said macros are
aol based. so im trying to expand that and show that even though its only
made in the font arial-10 that it stil is a form of ascii art. ive also
decided to expand my page for ascii art and ansi art. so if anyone who
checks out my page and would like to have their stuff posted just email
me. also id like to say this is a great page...i learned most of the stuff
know about ascii art here, keep up the good work :]
( Joan's note: Macros are a form of text
art, bit since they use a proportional font and often non-ASCII characters,
I don't consider them "ASCII" art. Some
macros are beautiful -- and I have linked to your website. Thank
you
for sharing.)
Comments:
Before IBM-compatible computers took over the world, the Commodore
64, Apple ][, and Atari computers all had their own BBSs, with little cross-over
between them. The Apple ][ was not very capable in text-art terms, having
only the basics - A-Z, numbers, and punctuation, plus 'inverse' and 'flash'
text modes. I've never really seen much screen-oriented text art from that
world; most of it harks back to teletype stuff. The Ataris and c64 each
had their own perversions of ASCII, however, stuffed full of little graphics
characters, and color capabilites. I never had an Atari, so I'm not too
knowledgeable about that world, but on the c64 boards, one would not only
find static images, but what were then called 'movies' - long textfiles
that incorporated not only color changes and graphics characters, but also
screen clears, cursor movements, and the like, to create crude animation
when read over a 300 or 1200 baud connection. I haven't the foggiest idea
where one could find these. I have a few old 5.25" discs full of them,
but I don't know exactly where in the big pile of C64 stuff they ARE.
( Joan's note: think we'd still have the
old technology around to run the animations?)
Comments:
Hmmm, remorse www.remorse.org is still doing line-sigs, collys and
such, "new-school" then they are doing art-scene new-school, using nearly
all of the 256 characters available in the standard char-set... ..pretty
impressive...
___...---'''~~~'-. . :: . .-'~~~'''---...___
'-.___....--{''~~~\ \ _LL_ / 7~~~''}--....___,-'
\ () ) ) ) .--~~--. ( ( ( () /
'-..{_/__..-' _( ____ )_ '-..__\_}..-'
/ :: \
- || -
_.-----VV-----._
- -: ( _.--~~~~~~--._ ) :- -
' '--..--''--..--' ' hS-99
______________________ ______ __ _
/ __ / _ \ /--\ / /_/ /__/
/ |/ _/ / \ \ \| |/ / ____ ___
/____|_________|_________/\___/ /_/_/ / _/
..hmm.. the guy was good.. ..but the sig was hasty..
( Joan's note: The "standard" ASCII character set contains less than 256 characters...
I think you may have included the non-standard characters into your total count.
They are not ASCII and are not standard on all PC systems.)
Comments:
First time i asciied was 85 on a c64 , but the real ascii took place
on the good old amiga days As i see the "non scene" asciis here , i have
to say that the amiga sceners mainly used / \ _ | and sumtimes sum other
chars . The biggest fun was the ascii collections , where the artist collected
all his requests and put it into one small or big txtfile with greeting
credits thoughts intro whatever . Thats was the True Ascii Scene , which
is dead ow . So its nice to see some Non Sceners doing their thang 8) rAMoN
\ hOusE of sTyLe \ LowProfile
( Joan's note: My first computer was a
C128 -- how times have changed, huh? ASCII lives on though)
Comments:
Hmmm, I've got two non-standard signs in my name, but I was just born
with them, hey, Jgs, you signed my guestbook, so I'm signing yours back...
I think that the old greeks used words in collaboration with pictures,
as in 70's style, if you know what I mean.. like the letters were parts
of the object... I have also heard by an art-scener that C.S. Lewis did
Ascii-Art, by using words in a poem to create a picture, like..
.---'''---. .--./ -- -. /-. ( .-/ . -"<"-' /- / '-( .--. -"* /--' \ .-""- .' \___.-' hS-99Well, that's all, Håk
Comments:
Hello, possibly it would be interesting to have some information of
the ASCII self. I'm not sure of all this information are 100% correct:
At the beginning no ASCII exists. The standard was called ANSI X3.4 "Coded
Character Set - 7-Bit American National Standard Code for Information Interchange".
It was publicized at the 30. April 1965 as "ECMA-6" and 1972 as "ISO 646"
with national variations. It might be interesting that ASCII is an ANSI
code. An "ASCII- Institute" didn't exist and ASCII is only the shortcut
of ANSI X3.4... The main problem is the definition of ANSI: It is an institute
and not a character set! Nevertheless it is popular to speech about the
ANSI- code and the main reason is that Microsoft is doing it. The first
real modification of the ANSI X3.4 (alias ASCII) was done by IBM. They
implemented the extended "Code Page 437" which was saved in the ROM of
the graphic adapter (beginning of the 80th). Today the operating system
(and not the hardware) make the character set available. Windows uses the
ANSI X3.4 with the "Code Page 1252". The MS documents define the windows
char'set as ANSI code, but this isn't consistent. Possibly they thought
it would be to difficult to call the char'sets "ANSI X3.4 + Code Page (or
ISO) ...", but theoretically there is no ANSI or 8-bit ASCII char'set.
In my opinion it is problematic that the os and not the hardware makes
the character set available. A software definition makes a modification
possible. This could destroy the idea of a standard code. Ok., I hope this
wasn't 'too much' out of topic. Meph.
( Joan's note: Not at all Meph! Thanks
for the technical information!!!)
Comments:
Don't forget to include Remorse (Ascii Art Group) witness the true
power of the ascii art world!
( Joan's note: Remorse has been mentioned,
right? )
10/28/98 13:10:01
| Name: Bad Bunny | My URL: Visit Me |
| My Email: Email Me |
Comments:
Just passing thru and saw your page Thanks
( Joan's note: Thanks for stopping! and
I hope you return. I usually update around the beginning of the month.)
Comments:
/| // / || || /| // // .·´ /|\/
/ // /| |\ / ||/ / /| /|/ |/ |/ /¸,./ / |
/ / | / | / / / / \`·.\ \ | | \ | | |||´ / /|
/ /.·´/ `·¸,.-·´¯¯¯\´_/_\\__/
/ /,./, / .-.-==-./ ¯¯ / / //.´ /
|/ \=,_ _.=- \./¯\_.·´ \”-´`, ´`”--´
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,¯¯ / /-.„./~__,.-, |`·´ / /¯¯`·.´¯¯¯¯
//// / /'””`·. \, \ \,„ / .·´ // | \´
\ /\ -._ `·.¸.-´¨¯ / \ ( --. ./
`/._ \ `· \-·´ // /. |- | `, ' \ ' / |
\ | | `/ ._ \ _.· .·´ | / ´.
,\___`·._ ·´____/.____.·´¨ \.-·
`, / {==============| /___ | ,-,/=\ \¯==¯¯=¯¯==¯==¯=/
/===-- / /`/`/`/`/=||¯| ¯¯¯¯| ¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯
\|¨|¨|¯|¯| /=| `-------´ | | \ \\-'---'---/=/
§šJ¹ | \ | | \ \\´ | \ | | \\\
`\ , /´ | | | \\\ / \\\\\ | | ||\ \\\\ \\\\\\\
| | || \\ \\ \\\\\\\\\ | | || \\ \\ \\\\\\\\\ |
| || \\ \\ \\\\\\\\\ | | || ` \\ \\\\\\\\\ | |
|| \\ \\\\\\\\\ | | |\\ \\\\\\\ | | // \\ \ \ \\\\
| //| \\ \ \| |_ ./ \_ __ __//// \====/ `·.======.·´
/====/ |====\ Ssj¹SonGohan .·´¨¯¯
' ' ' \ / `·. ---- /________.--·´ \ \
\ / `·..·´
( Joan's note: Ooops... Did you try
to preformat that? Adding a <pre> before the pic and a </pre>
afterthe pic might format it so that it looks right. I'd like to
see the pic that you posted-- I don't recognize the sig on it.
I always like to see new ASCII pics!)
Comments:
just face it, ascii art will never die.. NEVER!! the scene will always
be in need of good ascii artist, when dialup boards are dying telnet will
be there.. so, if not the BBS scene is dead so not is ascii art... live
long and prosper / siging off, inphamilair (sweden)
( Joan's note: Woo Hoo! Long Live ASCII
Art! )
Comments:
it all started with my BBS, i ripped bloack-ansi pictures from variuos
ansi painters and one day the cought me! then i desided to draw my own
work to my board, it all went so good that i joined several ascii groups
and i now draw for people all over the orld, like nfo files, bbs art..
everything!
( Joan's note: Perhaps I'm a little out
of it... just what *do* ASCII groups do? And why would somebody want to
join a group?)
Comments:
The pictures of The Gospel Of John by Gwang Hyuk Lee are absolutely
amazing. These NEED to be available in poster form. Do you know if posters
are available of this image? If there aren't any, would it possible to
get a really good copy of the image so so e posters could be made? Is Gwang
Hyuk Lee still alive, and how could we contact him? Thanks, Brian
( Joan's note: I have heard that this picture
once was available in posted form. I have no other information about
a poster and I'm not in a position to make one from his work. Gwang Hyuk
Lee was killed, supposedly in response to creating the 'Gospel of John'
image.)
Comments:
we called it ansi art, but that was because my wife used the ansi commands
that made the cursor move around the screen before placeing a letter, and
because she used the ansi commands to change the foreground and background
colors of the text. but other than those ansi commands, she used only the
regular text characters, and very rarely used any of the block characters,
in her art. she made a great effort to use none of the ansi block characters
in her art because she wanted to keep it "pure text", something that would
still look correct if printed out on a typewriter, even if it lost the
colors she had put in. we had a BBS on fido-net from april '85 to september
'95. violet died of cancer in july of '95. in the ten years that she made
her art, we collected about 2500 thank you messages from people that were
useing her artwork. we also got quite a few phone calls from people. since
we distributed the pictures electronicly to others in fido-net, we were
pretty free to send them anywhere that had a phone line. we had thanks
messages , these were sent to us through fido-net, from most countries
in the world. fido-net was glad to transfer messages through the nodes
of the network TO us, but we found out right away, the first time we tried
it, that they would would NOT send the artwork through the net. so we used
the fido-net node list as a phone book and had our computer dial directly
to the recipiants computer and then transfer the file to them directly
from us, and bypassed the other nodes in the network. this way we didn't
use up the fido-net bandwidth for our hobby. and it was a hobby with us,
we never asked for money or favors in exchange for violets art. we did
have interesting phone bills. we found out what 20 seconds worth of long
distance charges cost for almost every country on earth. it was a great
hobby for violet, and she got alot of pleasure out of knowing that people
were finding suprise messages with a file attached that contained the artwork
she had made for them in their e-mail box. the way she decided what picture
to make and send to people was actualy pretty simple. she would sit and
look at the node list, the node list was a listing of all of the BBS's
that were part of fido net, and if the name of the BBS brought some picture
to mind, she would then draw that picture in ansi, useing colored text,
and then she would send it to them. she would send a letter of introduction
telling who we were, and why she was sending this, and then the artwork
itself would be in a compressed file attached to the message. we would
only get a response from about 20% of the messages that we sent out. and
only a few, probebly a total of a dozen, were rejections. it was great
fun, and violet struck up several e-mail type pen pal relationships through
fido-net. many of the people we communicated with regularly were NOT people
that we had sent pictures to, but people that had seen violets artwork,
and had sent e-mail to her asking about her art. she was always happy to
spend time talking/typeing to people, even if it wasn't about ansi art.
my part in the whole operation, was to keep the equipment running and configured
in such a way as to be able to make quick, clean international calls. one
time the computer made $500 worth of calls to a wrong number in the U.K.
all in one 4 hour period. i learned alot about how far you can trust a
computer to follow bad instructions with this hobby. computers follow instructions
very precisly, and all the way. well i've rambled on enough here. maybe
you have seen some of her stuff. she sometimes put her initials, VS , in
her pictures. many people copied her stuff and then changed it, often without
even removeing her initials from the picture, and signing their name to
it and takeing credit for it. this was something that upset me quite a
bit, but violet felt a little sad that someone liked her art well enough
to steal it, and not give her credit for haveing thought of it. ahh, well.
such is the world we live in. it's nice to see this WWW page dedicated
to this type of art. good job, and keep it up. thank you for the pleasent
memories,
( Joan's note: You're welcome Ray.
It sounds like your wife really enjoyed her text-art. I believe that
if someone enjoys what they are doing, others can tell. And
it is in her great spirit of sharing that she will be remembered. Thanks
for telling me about your wonderful wife..)
Comments:
In reference to Alan Riddel's book,I also contributed I think that
such work goes in and out of fashion and unfortunately some of the work
tries to produce photo-type images rather than honour the spirit of the
medium being used - I still hanker a bit aft r the typewriter !
( Joan's note: Using a typewriter also
allowed a certain degree of flexibility in creating the text-based images.
Overstrike, paper manipulation, and half/quarter spacing are techniques
used in typewriter art, but not in ASCII art. Typewriter art
and ASCII art are not the same medium, however similar.)
Comments:
All During the 80's I Spent hours working the RTTY PIX nets. Some of
the best teletype artists in the world gathered on 20 meters (14.080 if
I remember right) One of the best was (mabe still is) Don Royer (Wa6pir)
in Calif. He could reproduce a playboy ce terfold that looked exactly like
a black and white photo from 10' feet away.. I uploaded my entire collection
to the HEX9 Packet radio BBS several years ago, and I beleive it's still
there buried in the directories someplace. If your a ham, a polite note
to Len VE3FJB (Packet radio address ve3fjb@ve3fjb and he might tell you
just here to find them..other than that, send me an e-mail and i'll see
it I can retrieve them "zip em up" and send them off... de Bill
( Joan's note: Wow! )
Comments:
There is indeed a book called "Typewriter Art", edited by Alan Riddell
(London, 1975). I contributed to it. It was a rather oversimple picture
of trains. Later I did a much more complex version which I posted to an
ASCII Art newsgroup.
( Joan's note: Thanks Andrew-- I
do appreciate you sending me copies of sections of the book...look for
an update in my ASCII art history section of this website)
Donovan - 07/14/98 16:02:20
My URL:http://www.oocities.org/Paris/LeftBank/6558/
My Email:bakd@hotmail.com
ASCII Art Information: Before Radio & Typewriters there
was...poetry!
Comments:
Well, a few months ago, we were discussing the oldest method or form
of ascii art in the newsgroup. The one I came up with that has held up
has been poetry. Centuries ago, they wrote poetry in the shapes of things.
And it was the consensus of our newsgroup (at that time) that this must
have been the oldest form of ascii art. Of course it wasn't called ascii
art then...Joan seems to be the only one who can ever remember the name
of that kind poetry. Needing that word from JOAN...for the Nth time! LOL
I hope this will help you a little bit with the origination of ascii art.
Of course when radio, typewriters, and computers came along that is when
it became popular and got it's name. But as a group we all agreed that
this form of poetry was probably the thing that started it all. If anyone
has some more factual things about this form of poetry please fill us in.
( Joan's note: it's called "typography", I believe
)
Bill Hanson (WA9WGO) - 06/22/98
22:52:27
My Email:wlhanson@worldnet.att.net
Comments:
You might say that the orgin of ASCII art also has it roots in amatuer
radio. Amatuers with teletype equipment (the old model 19 etc.) filled
the airwaves with teletype pictures in BAUDOT code.
(Joan's note: check the links on the main history
page to find some BAUDOT code art link!)
Comments:
I am very glad to have found the work of Gwang Hyuk Rhee on the Web!
I love the way his ASCII piece has deep spiritual meaning: The Word becomes
flesh! Does anyone know where I can get prints of Mr. Rhee's work? I would
be very grateful to find out wh re. I have some prints in my bookstore
art gallery, but want to sell them and need copies. Thanks! Jon
(Joan's note: I have not seen prints of his work--only
the online images... sorry... I'm sure that they are amazing!)
Comments: