The early history of text art

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by Lauri Rauhanen
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The early history of text art

• Text-based artwork dates back several thousand
  years
  
• Visual wordplay was practiced by ancient Romans,
  Greeks, and Persians as far back as 324 B.C.

The Swan
Created during the ancient Roman-Latin period,
over 2,000 years ago.
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• The early history of text art
• Shaped poems began to appear in early 1600s

An excerpt from Chapter 3 of Lewis Carrolls 1865
novel, Alice in Wonderland.
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• The introduction of a typewriter
• QWERTY keyboarding was introduced by Sholes and
  Glidden in 1874
  
• Typewriter manufacturers organized speed writing
  competitions, which led to
  typewriter art

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Butterfly
Earliest preserved example of typewriter art by
Flora Stacey, 1898.
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The Duke of Edinburgh
Photograph typed by Dennis Collins,1957.
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The near history

• The 1970s brought the typewriting art into
  videoterminals
  
• Introduction and the popularity of IBM PC
• MS-DOS
• 1986 Ian Davis introduces TheDraw, fueling a
  completely new generation of artists

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THE UNDERGROUND
..the introduction of scene culture
- With introduction of BBS (Bulletin Board
System) people of similar intrests could find
eachother - This resulted that these people with
similar skills wanted to group up - Groups sta
rted competing with eachother - This happened als
o to text art, now known as Art Scene, or,
ANSI SCENE // ASCII SCENE
- Text art was often used in info files of
groups, which is why ascii art is still though
t to be very closely tied with the hacking and
pirating scene.
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CHARACTER LIMITATIONS

• The number of available text characters has
  increased over time
  
• Teletype art 64 characters/codes. (5-bit)
• ASCII art 128 characters. (7-bit)
• ANSI art 256 characters. (8-bit)
• Unicode 4.0 over 96,000 characters. (21-bit)
• Text demos modifiable character set.

Few terms to know.. ASCII American Standard C
ode for Information Interchange
ANSI American National Standards Institute
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The IBM PC supported an extended character set
based upon the ASCII standard, code page 437.
reminder the artscene was not o
nly PC but also C64, Amiga and Atari thing
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ANSI / ASCII scene is born

• 1989 Aces of Ansi Art (AAA) creates the first
  team of text mode artists
  
• Year later AAA is broken apart and the main
  members create a group called ACID (Ansi
  Creators in Demand)
  
• Soon after came iCE (Insane Creators
  Enterprise)
  
• Amiga ASCII scene starts to take shape in year
  1992
  
• Hundreds of groups followed

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Why would anyone draw ANSI / ASCII graphics?

• Fame
• Access
• Money

Why would anyone need ANSI / ASCII graphics?

• Then
• More users to BBS
• Which results to ... Fame.
• Make your group look cool with professional nfo
  files and file_id.diz
  
• Now
• Still, make your product / group look cool with a
  great nfo file
  
• Retro is cool!

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The Pits by Marshal Law. (IBM PC ANSI scroller, 1
991)
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Collection Volume 1 by ART. (Amiga ASCII colly, 1
992 excerpt)
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TEXT ART TODAY

• Many Art communities continue to thrive today
• US ASCII - alt.ascii.art
• Amiga ASCII - Boondocks
• Japanese ASCII - Channel 2
• PC ANSI - Acheron.org
• PC ASCII - thuglife.org
• PC ANSI / ASCII - sixteencolors.net
• Textmode demos

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MODERN ART
Blending fresh styles with the
old ones, the scene is maybe more alive than eve
r Text mode demos have brought the demo scene
and ansi scene together Retro is in!
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The Yard by dMG and webpige0. (Oldschool Amiga AS
CII, 2004)
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Haciend by Ansichrist. (Newschool PC ASCII, 2004)
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