So as the Star Wars fan that I am, I was quite excited to telnet into towel.blinkenlighs.nl. Of course after after reading my fellow students blogs I was ready for what was in store, and let me say, once in I wasn't disappointed.For the uninitiated; telnetting into towel.blinkenlights.nl gives you an ASCII art animation of Star Wars Episode 4 A New Hope. Thats right baby, welcome to geekville!
ASCII art is is made from ASCII and is one of those terribly geek things to do. Originally created in the
late 60's it took off in the 70's and 80's allowing people to create images and share them when bandwidth was limited and printers couldn't create the photo realistic prints we can today.
While bandwidth today is cheap and expansive and printers can run of high quality photos, I don't think something such as ASCII art will ever completely leave us, apparently it's been around in one form or another since the birth of the typewriter. For me ASCII art is an important part of computing and the internets history, and while no longer part of the mainstream (was it ever) we still use common forms of ASCII art day in, day out.In fact one form which you may well be familiar with is the simple emoticon :-) This simple form of ASCII art was first created in 1982 and is still helping us communicate feelings and moods.
I suggest having a further look at ASCII art and if you get inspired then have a go at creating some of your own either by hand or if you wish, you can auto generate it.
Posts
I have read about ASCII before and found it quite boring. But the way you describe it and the links you provide got me really curious about it. Very well done! Evelyn
ReplyDeleteI think that ASCII art could be really interesting if taken further. I've always wondered why it has never been appropriated into the art world. In my mind it's the digital child of Pointillism. Maybe I've just missed something and it's all ready been done, yet my searches have turned nothing up.
ReplyDelete