A tribute to Flora Stacey
Description
The art of creating images from letters, numbers, and symbols – known today as ASCII art – constitutes a digital legacy of typewriter art, whose origins date back to the late 19th century. The titular Flora Stacey, a British secretary, created a drawing of a butterfly on a typewriter in 1898, considered the first work of this kind. This miniature uses textual characters to create a self-portrait that forms in real-time, to the rhythm of communication between human and machine. “A tribute to Flora Stacey…” engages in a play with the idea of the self-portrait and visual language, exploring how poetry, text, and code can become forms of image.
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“A tribute to Flora Stacey: universal ASCII art self-portrait.” The typewriter art and the ASCII/ANSI art.
ASCII art is a graphic design technique that uses computers for presentation and consists of pictures pieced together from the printable characters defined by the ASCII Standard. Most examples of ASCII art require a fixed-width font.
There is also a slightly more technically advanced ASCII art mutation called ANSI art. ANSI art is a computer art form that was widely used at one time on BBSes. It is similar to ASCII art, but constructed from a larger set of 256 letters, numbers, and symbols — all codes found in IBM code page 437, often referred to as extended ASCII and used in MS-DOS and Unix environments. ANSI art also contains special ANSI escape sequences that color text with the 16 foreground and 8 background colours offered by ANSI.SYS, an MS-DOS device driver loosely based upon the ANSI X3.64 standard for text terminals. Some ANSI artists take advantage of the cursor control sequences within ANSI X3.64 in order to create animations, commonly referred to as ANSImations — however, there are also examples of ASCII art using animation.
ASCII art technique is widely used by artists, hobbysts, hackers. Especially interesting example of use and creative development of the ASCII art are works created by the “ASCII Art Ensemble” group. The group, formed by Walter van der Cruijsen, Luka Frelih, Vuk Cosic, was founded in 1998. Members of the “ASCII Art Ensemble” created a software to “code” moving images into animated (sequential) ASCII art pieces. Most recognizable work by the group is “Deep ASCII” — an ASCII version of the famous pornographic film “Deep Throat” from 1972.
ASCII art is also a descendant of the concrete and visual poetry and so called “typewriter art”: a pre-computer technique of creating images from characters available in typewriters (the first known iconic piece of typewriter art — an image of a butterfly composed of brackets, dashes, slashes, and an asterisk, made by Flora Stacey, a British secretary, in 1898).
“A tribute to Flora Stacey: universal ASCII art self-portrait.” is a simple, interactive artwork based on the ASCII art technique in it’s animated (however not in the way ANSI art is animated) form. It is also a game with the very idea of self-portrait, text, poetry, visuality, and various ways of looking and observing present in the history of art.
Technical documentation
Parameters passed via URL
- bg background color in standard hexadecimal notation 0xRRGGBB
- camera 0 or 1; default 0; disables/enables displaying the camera image (the “camera” toggle)
- color 0 or 1; default 0; disables/enables text coloring (the “color” toggle)
- eq 0 or 1; default 0; disables/enables image equalization (the “eq” toggle)
- famo user | environment (or env); default user; [facingMode] allows forcing the use of the front (user) or rear (environment) camera on devices equipped with dual cameras (most modern mobile devices)
- fontname name of the font used
- gui 0 or 1; default 1; hides/shows the graphical user interface panel
- h vertical camera resolution
- invert 0 or 1; default 0; disables/enables color inversion mode (the “invert” toggle)
- lang en or pl; default en; sets the interface language (additional languages can be added)
- midiinport disabled by default; MIDI port number for external control of Miniature (receiving messages)
- midioutport disabled by default; MIDI port number for external control of Miniature (sending messages)
- mirror 0 or 1; default 1; disables/enables image mirroring mode (the “mirror” toggle)
- pointer 0 or 1; default 1; hides/shows the mouse cursor
- poster 0 or 1; default 0; disables/enables image posterization (the “posterize” toggle)
- txtcol text color in standard hexadecimal notation 0xRRGGBB
- txtsize 0.0 … 1.0; sets the initial normalized font size (the “font size” slider)
- w horizontal camera resolution
- worker 0 or 1; default 0; allows blocking the browser’s built-in mechanisms that suspend the program when the window is not visible
- ws address; disabled by default; enables and sets the address (usually localhost:9001) for WebSocket communication (allows external control of Miniature and customization)
- xws address; disabled by default; enables and sets the address (usually ws://localhost:9001) with protocol specification for WebSocket communication (allows external control of Miniature and customization)
Messages passed via WebSocket
Messages to which Miniature responds
- bg r g b; background color in the form of three normalized components (RGB) (0.0 … 1.0)
- camera 0 or 1; default 0; disables/enables displaying the camera image (the “camera” toggle)
- color 0 or 1; default 0; disables/enables text coloring (the “color” toggle)
- eq 0 or 1; default 0; disables/enables image equalization (the “eq” toggle)
- invert 0 or 1; default 0; disables/enables color inversion mode (the “invert” toggle)
- mirror 0 or 1; default 1; disables/enables image mirroring mode (the “mirror” toggle)
- poster 0 or 1; default 0; disables/enables image posterization (the “posterize” toggle)
- txtcol r g b; text color in the form of three normalized components (RGB) (0.0 … 1.0)
- txtsize 0.0 … 1.0; sets the normalized font size (the “font size” slider)
Messages sent by Miniature
not applicable
MIDI
Messages to which Miniature responds
- CC 000 on any channel sets the normalized font size (the “font size” slider)
- CC 001 on any channel default 0; disables/enables color inversion mode (the “invert” toggle)
- CC 002 on any channel default 0; disables/enables image equalization (the “eq” toggle)
- CC 003 on any channel default 0; disables/enables displaying the camera image (the “camera” toggle)
- CC 004 on any channel default 0; disables/enables text coloring (the “color” toggle)
- CC 005 on any channel default 0; disables/enables image posterization (the “posterize” toggle)
- CC 006 on any channel default 1; disables/enables image mirroring mode (the “mirror” toggle)
- CC 007 on any channel red component of the text color
- CC 008 on any channel green component of the text color
- CC 009 on any channel blue component of the text color
- CC 010 on any channel red component of the background color
- CC 011 on any channel green component of the background color
- CC 012 on any channel blue component of the background color
Messages sent by Miniature
not applicable
Communication with MaxMSP
Messages to which Miniature responds
not applicable
Messages sent by Miniature
not applicable