ASCII art is a graphic design technique that utilizes computers for presentation and consists of pictures pieced together from the 95 printable (from a total of 128) characters defined by the ASCII Standard from 1963 and ASCII compliant character sets with proprietary extended characters (beyond the 128 characters of standard 7-bit ASCII). The term is also loosely used to refer to text based art in general. ASCII art can be created with any text editor, and is often used with free-form languages. Most examples of ASCII art require a fixed-width font (non-proportional fonts, like on a traditional typewriter) such as Courier for presentation. Among the oldest known examples of ASCII art are the creations by computer-art pioneer Kenneth Knowlton from around 1966, who was working for Bell Labs at the time. I’ve been working on Scoop it, setting up the topic for ASCII Art there. They call it being a topic curator. I spent many years working as an editor in the Open Directory and this feels much like that, only it shows the sites as more than just a listing. I’m enjoying it so far. I will probably start other topics, I’ve got a few in mind. I think the thing is to keep them small and tidy in a specific niche, very tight and refined in topic. The ASCII Art topic includes typewriter art, because it is so rare to find any now. But I am narrowing it to real ASCII art versus that which I think of as ANSI art. Will see how it goes. I expect there will be some overlap in order to include the ASCII as fully as I want. A work in progress and definitely an ongoing process. That’s the idea! Flickr: ASCII Art Flickr: 3D ASCII Art Flickr: ANSI and ASCII Artwork There isn’t much at all on Flickr of the line art which I think of first, when I am looking at ASCII art.]]>