Re: ASCII Art History...

After a lengthy debate here about a year ago, as a group we concluded that
the first ascii-art had to be the poetry that was typed up into shapes. Joan
can tell you the name of it, I always forget! Anyway here is an example of
what I am refering too.


                                          The Dolphins' Way,
                        In Me          Aspirations of the living
                     sea The dolphins do move within    me The aura of
                       their soul, I feel deep down To be in the water
                          and not on ground Sifting through the
                            ocean, an expressing show Communi-
                          cation of a song and a blow Pro-
                       tecting even those not of their
                    kind They ask nothing in return,
               they do not mind The most gracious
            and unselfish of all that wander I
        wish to swim with them, nothing   could
      be fonder The dolphins mean so     much
   to me, you see I need to thank      them,
  for showing us how to be                           (Donovan 1997)


So we figured that since these were the first kinds of typed pictures using
ascii characters (called letters in their day, LOL), that they should get
the credit as the first ascii-art. I don't think anyone has been able to
actually pin-point the date of the oldest one.

I did come up with the theory, of this kind of peotry, as being the oldest
form of ascii-art. The group here in alt.ascii-art all seem to embrace it at
the time of the discussion as being the first true ascii-art.

JOAN or ANYONE ELSE, WHAT IS THIS KIND OF POETRY CALLED AGAIN? I HATE I CAN
NEVER REMEMBER THAT!

Anyway I hope this helps you out some. If you don't mind, we would all love
to read your speech about ascii-art if you write it out anyway. SO post it
here when you are done. Here is an essay on ascii-art that we helped with a
long time ago(1.5 years ago I think). It was written before I came up with
the poetry theory. But it does have a History section. It should help you a
bunch.

http://www.geocities.com/SoHo/Square/5825/ascii_essay.html

Peace,
Donovan

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