{"id":5950,"date":"2022-05-27T09:33:49","date_gmt":"2022-05-27T16:33:49","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blog.ronrecord.com\/?p=5950"},"modified":"2025-10-02T10:32:07","modified_gmt":"2025-10-02T17:32:07","slug":"ascii-art-history","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.ronrecord.com\/index.php\/2022\/05\/27\/ascii-art-history\/","title":{"rendered":"Ascii Art History"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
\"\"
New York Times, October 11, 1966: Studies in Perception I – Computer Nude<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Ascii Art History<\/h2>\n

ASCII art is a graphic design technique that uses computers for presentation\nand consists of pictures pieced together from the 95 printable (from a total\nof 128) characters defined by the 1963 ASCII Standard<\/em>. Some Ascii art uses\nASCII compliant character sets with proprietary extended set of characters\n(beyond the 128 characters of standard 7-bit ASCII). The term is also loosely\nused to refer to text based visual art in general. ASCII art can be created\nwith any text editor, and is often used with free-form languages. Most examples\nof ASCII art require a fixed-width font (non-proportional fonts, as on a\ntraditional typewriter) such as Courier for presentation.<\/p>\n

Among the oldest known examples of ASCII art are the creations by computer-art\npioneer Kenneth Knowlton from around 1966, who was working for Bell Labs at the\ntime. "Studies in Perception I" by Ken Knowlton and Leon Harmon from 1966 shows\nsome examples of their early ASCII art.<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n
\"Studies<\/th>\n<\/tr>\n<\/thead>\n
Studies in Perception I – Telephone<\/em><\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n

ASCII art was invented, in large part, because early printers often lacked\ngraphics ability and thus characters were used in place of graphic marks.\nAlso, to mark divisions between different print jobs from different users,\nbulk printers often used ASCII art to print large banner pages, making the\ndivision easier to spot so that the results could be more easily separated\nby a computer operator or clerk. ASCII art was also used in early e-mail\nwhen images could not be embedded.<\/p>\n

Pre-Computer Text Art<\/h2>\n

Concrete Poetry<\/h3>\n

Text art predates computers. Perhaps the earliest use of characters\nin art was in ancient Greece during the 3rd and 2nd centuries BCE with shaped\nor patterned poems referred to as "concrete poetry". In this art form, the\nwords of a poem are arranged in such a way as to depict their subject.<\/p>\n

Early religious examples of shaped poems in English include "Easter Wings"\nand "The Altar" in George Herbert’s The Temple (1633):<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n
\"Easter<\/th>\n<\/tr>\n<\/thead>\n
Easter Wings<\/em><\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n

In the beginning, the written word did not consist of "text". The first written\ndocuments consisted of pictures or glyphs which represented ideas and objects,\nnot letters or text characters.<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n
\"Hieroglyphics<\/th>\n<\/tr>\n<\/thead>\n
Hieroglyphics on a tomb in the Valley of the Kings in Luxor, Egypt<\/em><\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n

Over time, the written word developed into symbols which looked more like\npresent-day text. The very first text art pictures were drawn by hand.\nCreative people used ornamental penmanship to create wondrously beautiful\ndocuments and pictures. The monastic monks created breath-taking manuscripts\nwhich incorporated letters of text into their art. However, there were few\nother pieces of art that were made from text characters.<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n
\"Illuminated<\/th>\n<\/tr>\n<\/thead>\n
An illuminated letter R from the 13th century Legenda Sanctorium at the beginning of an illuminated story of Saint Ipolitus in Canterbury Cathedral, Canterbury, England<\/em><\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n

Ironically, Ascii Art turned the arc of its own history back on itself, from\nthe beginning when documents were written with pictures to pictures written\nas a text document.<\/p>\n

Typewriter Art<\/h3>\n

Text artists in the 19th century invented a novel technique for creating art:\nfeeding paper into the rollers of typewriters numerous times, each at a\ndifferent angle to allow the overprinting and fine-tuning of an image.<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n
\"Typewriter<\/th>\n<\/tr>\n<\/thead>\n
Typewriter art by Flora F.F. Stacey from 1898<\/em><\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n

Teletype Art<\/h3>\n

Typewriter art was succeeded by Teletype art using character sets such as the\nBaudot code which predated ASCII. Text images produced on a TTY or RTTY have\nbeen discovered as early as 1923.<\/p>\n

Computer Generated Text Art<\/h2>\n

Line Printer Art<\/h3>\n

In the 1960s Andries van Dam and Kenneth Knowlton were producing realistic\nimages using line printers by overprinting several characters on top of one\nanother. This technique used EBCDIC rather than ASCII. Line printer art\nflourished throughout the 1970s as anyone who had a job in a computer lab\nback then will tell you. Everybody learned how to print a Snoopy banner.<\/p>\n

ASCII Art<\/h3>\n

In the late 1970s and early 1980s computer bulletin board systems,\nemail users, game designers, Usenet news groups, and others began\nusing ASCII art to represent images. ASCII artists invented Emoticons,\nshort small combinations of characters which represented the user’s\nemotional state – happy, sad, angry, and more. Email messages and\nUsenet newsgroups were littered with \ud83d\ude42 and {:> and the Golden Age\nof ASCII art flourished throughout the 1990s.<\/p>\n

As usual, recording artist Todd Rundgren was out ahead of the wave on\nthis phenomenon as well. In 1974 Rundgren released the double album\n"Todd" which contained a poster insert portraying Rundgren’s head\ncomposed of a list of names of fans that had sent back the postcard\nincluded within the sleeve of his previous release, "A Wizard,\na True Star". Rundgren had created the Ascii Selfie.<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n
\"Poster<\/th>\n<\/tr>\n<\/thead>\n
Poster insert from 1974 double album "Todd"<\/em><\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n

Todd was not the first Ascii Artist to render a portrait in text.\nDuring the Korean War (circa 1950), a very talented Korean named\n‘Gwang Hyuk Lee’ made a hand drawn text picture depicting Jesus.\nHe used the entire text in the Bible’s "Book of John" to create\nthis image.<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n
\"Portrait<\/th>\n<\/tr>\n<\/thead>\n
Portrait of Jesus using text from the Book of John<\/em><\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n

In the mid-1990s many Ascii Artists flourished online. One such artist,\nJoan G. Stark<\/a>, also known by\nher pseudonym ‘Spunk’ or her initials ‘jgs’, was particularly prolific\nand talented. From 1996 to 2003 Stark created several hundred works of art,\nmost of which were posted to the Usenet newsgroup alt.ascii.art. Between 1996\nand 1998 her website received over 250,000 unique visitors. Stark’s involvement\nin ASCII art has been taken as an example of increased online participation by\nwomen, and her imagery as an example of ASCII art becoming "softer, more\nstereotypically feminine."<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n
\"Ascii<\/th>\n<\/tr>\n<\/thead>\n
Ascii representation of an eagle by Joan G. Stark<\/em><\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n

Spunk’s website on Geocities is defunct but has been archived by the Internet Archive at\nhttps:\/\/web.archive.org\/web\/20091028050914\/http:\/\/www.geocities.com\/spunk1111<\/a> where one can still find what is perhaps the most extensive history of ASCII Art ever produced<\/a>.<\/p>\n

This technique of representing images as text found its way into the source\ncode of computer programs as a way to represent company or product logos.\nIn some cases, the entire source code of a program is a piece of ASCII art.\nFor instance, an entry to one of the earlier "International Obfuscated C Code\nContest" is a program that adds numbers, but visually looks like a binary\nadder drawn in logic ports.<\/p>\n

ANSI Art<\/h3>\n

ANSI art is similar to ASCII art, but constructed from a larger set of 256\nletters, numbers, and symbols \u2014 often referred to as extended ASCII. ANSI art\nalso contains special ANSI escape sequences that can be used to color text.<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n
\"Modern<\/th>\n<\/tr>\n<\/thead>\n
Modern extended Ascii Art created with Asciiville<\/em><\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n

The Decline of ASCII and ANSI Art<\/h2>\n

The rise of the Internet and graphical desktop environments saw the decline\nof BBSes and character based user environments which made ASCII and ANSI art\nharder to create and to view due to the lack of software compatible with the\nnew dominant operating system, Microsoft Windows.<\/p>\n

By the end of 2002 all traditional ANSI art groups like ACiD, ICE, CIA, Fire,\nDark and many others were no longer making periodic releases of artworks,\ncalled "artpacks" and the community of artists almost vanished.<\/p>\n

The Resurrection of ASCII and ANSI Art<\/h2>\n

ASCII and ANSI art resurrected in 2022 with the publication of\n"Asciiville"<\/a>, a\ncompendium of art, animation, utilities, and integrated components all\nutilizing character based graphics. Haha! Just kidding :smiley:. Asciiville\nleverages the resurgence of interest in character based graphics accompanied\nby many recent advances like Figlet Fonts<\/a>,\nLolcat<\/a>,\nlsd<\/a>,\nasciimatics<\/a>,\nasciinema<\/a>,\nbtop<\/a>,\njp2a<\/a>,\nMoebius<\/a>,\nand more. These modern utilities and character based\ncomponents have breathed new life into the ASCII art community and produced\nmany interesting works of art and animation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n
\"Julia<\/th>\n\"Marilyn<\/th>\n<\/tr>\n<\/thead>\n
Julia Set created with Asciiville<\/em><\/td>\nMarilyn Monroe created with Asciiville<\/em><\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n\n\n\n\n\n
\"The<\/th>\n<\/tr>\n<\/thead>\n
The author and a good friend created with Asciiville<\/em><\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n

Appendix<\/h2>\n

Jim Boulton has written\na fascinating article<\/a>\non the history and restoration of Computer Nude<\/em> from Ken Knowlton and Leon\nHarmon’s "Studies in Perception I". He provides the technical details of the\nartwork’s construction along with some great historical tidbits:<\/p>\n

\n

Computer Nude<\/em> was made at Bell Labs on an IBM 7094, a $2 million investment\nat the time. A black and white photograph of the dancer and choreographer\nDeborah Hay was reduced to a grid of grey squares. Symbols from a telephony\ncircuit diagram were then assigned to the greyscale values of those squares.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

\n

The resulting 12 feet by 5 feet print was hung on the wall at Bell Labs.\nCausing outrage, it was removed after a single day. Harmon and Knowlton were\ntold not to associate the name of Bell Labs with the artwork in any way.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

\n

Robert Rauschenberg was more impressed, using the image as the backdrop to his\npress conference when he launched E.A.T. (Experiments in Art and Technology).\nIt was subsequently reproduced in The New York Times, becoming the\npublication\u2019s first full-frontal nude. Bell Labs put it back on the wall.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Of interest to Kubrick fans, the photographer who took the original photograph\nof the model used in Computer Nude<\/em> was Max Matthews. In 1961, Matthews\nprogrammed the same IBM 7094 (later used to generate Computer Nude<\/em>) to play\nsnippets from the song "Daisy Bell". Arthur C Clarke was visiting Bell Labs\nat the time and incorporated the rendition into "2001: A Space Odyssey".\nThis was the computer that made the first computer nude AND it was HAL’s\nvoice singing "Daisy"!!!<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n
\"Ken<\/th>\n<\/tr>\n<\/thead>\n
Ken Knowlton and Leon Harmon<\/em><\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n

Addendum:<\/strong> This post is adapted from the original "Ascii Art History"<\/a>, a Wiki article in the Asciiville github repository<\/a>. Asciiville is an open source project integrating many character-based console and terminal applications to provide a rich modern environment to generate and view Ascii Art, play text-based games, and utilize many character-based system utilities and tools.<\/p>\n

View Asciiville introduction and demonstration videos below:<\/p>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n

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