TALK: Baltimore Sun article is HERE!

Here's my long-promised article on ASCII art and artists. Comments to this
address, as usual. It was on page D1 of the July 27 Baltimore Sun.

Story name: 07/27/94 180   Pub Date: 7/27/94    Section: FEATURES  
 Edition: FINAL     Publication: M
 Headline: Keyboard characters produce ASCII computer art bit by bit


    Poets and novelists turn words into pictures. But on the
Internet, the world-spanning computer network, a group of
people is taking this idea a bit further. They are ASCII artists,
devoted to taking the characters found on a typewriter keyboard
and drawing Winnie the Pooh, the Mona Lisa or Abraham Lincoln
out of arrangements of letters and symbols.
   ASCII -- which stands for "American Standard Code for
Information Interchange" is a set of 127 letters, numbers and
symbols that all computers (and most typewriters) in the country
have in common. That makes ASCII code the one way to transfer
information between many different kinds of computers. It
includes the alphabet, numbers and a pretty complete set of
punctuation, but no fractions or fancy graphic characters.
   Smaller versions of ASCII art such as ":-)" (turn it sideways and
you see a happy face) have become common shorthand for
showing moods in the millions of e-mail messages sent every
day. But off in their secluded studio in cyberspace (the Internet
address is 'rec.arts.ascii'), the true ASCII artists sit and churn out
fire-breathing dragons and two-foot-high nudes. They send them
to each other in e-mail, put them up on computer bulletin boards
and post them in ".plan files" so any Internet user getting
information about the artist will see a favorite piece of art.
   They're a motley bunch in the virtual studio, mostly amateurs
with the occasional professional artist or animator popping in.
(There's no money in ASCII art.) Animator Mike Jittlov, who has
done TV commercials and worked for Disney, has become
something of a cult figure in the ASCII art world due to his
popular nude portrait of a woman named Meriday. He even has
his own fan club.
   ASCII artists pride themselves on their ability to make grand
pictures out of, say, the letter "O," the number 8 and the
apostrophe. "To do more with less, that's the creed of ASCII
artists," says Prabal Nandy, an astrophysics major at Johns
Hopkins University.
   Most ASCII artists admit, though, that the No. 1 reason for the
popularity of the art form is its portability.
   "Everyone can see your ASCII art," which tips the scale in its
favor for quick-and-dirty drawings, Mr. Nandy says. "Other art
must be downloaded and then run through a program before it
can be viewed." To send a map to some friends, for instance,
would entail a four-step, half-hour process with some computers
-- or five minutes of drawing with X's, slashes and equal signs.
   The practice of turning words into pictures is nothing new. It
stems from the days of teletypes, when wire service operators
would keep themselves busy by sending huge, detailed pictures
through the Associated Press news wire.
   When bored 1960s computer operators would be left staring at
their screens, they'd make pictures on their line printers. The
computer code needed to draw the pictures would be
distributed on stacks of punched cards.
   "The widely distributed Mona Lisa card deck would weigh as
much as a nice-sized fireplace log -- and it would burn well, too,"
mused ASCII doodler Douglas Jones, who has a day job as a
computer science professor at the University of Iowa.
   But now that computers are learning how to deal with "real"
pictures, some ASCII artisans are wondering if their art will be
rendered obsolete by the very advance of technology that made
it possible.
   "By the end of this decade, computers, and the Net itself, will be
so powerful that ASCII art will no longer be necessary. You will
be able to send text, sound, graphics, movies, whatever," says
Bob Allison, who is the "zookeeper" of the rec.arts.ascii studio.
"But this doesn't mean that ASCII art will no longer exist. Making
pictures out of letters existed long before computers, and it will
exist long after the Net no longer 'needs' it."

HD: Keyboard characters produce ASCII computer art bit by bit 
BY: *(Sascha Segan)* 
SO: Sun Staff Writer
GR: ILLUSTRATION 1
CP: ASCII art captures Alfred E. Newman's smile or Mona Lisa's. 
GR: ILLUSTRATION 2
CP: Cartoon character Beavis lives in ASCII art.