ASCII art

ASCII art is a graphic technique that builds pictures out of the printable characters of the ASCII standard - letters, digits, and punctuation arranged in fixed-width lines so the eye blends them into an image. Its ancestry runs through typewriter art, practiced since 1867, and the line-printer mosaics of the 1960s: Kenneth Knowlton and Leon Harmon's Computer Nude (Studies in Perception I), made at Bell Labs in 1966, is among the earliest known examples. Text images circulated on teletypes and bulletin board systems, and the form flourished on Usenet in the 1990s, when artists like Joan Stark filled alt.ascii.art with signatures and scenes. It survives anywhere text is easier to transmit than graphics.

Defining characteristics

• Images composed only of fixed-width printable characters
• Tone created by the density of glyphs: sparser letters read as light
• Built line by line in plain-text editors and monospace fonts
• Banner pages, signatures, and border decoration for text-only media
• Strict line-length limits that shape composition

Key figures

• Kenneth Knowlton (1931-2022) — Bell Labs pioneer whose overprinted line-printer mosaics began computer character art
• Leon Harmon (1922-1982) — Co-author of Computer Nude (Studies in Perception I, 1966) with Knowlton
• Joan Stark (fl. 1990s) — Prolific Usenet ASCII artist of the alt.ascii.art scene

Example works

• Computer Nude (Studies in Perception I) — Kenneth Knowlton & Leon Harmon (1966)

Sources

• ASCII art - Wikipedia encyclopedia

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