Vuk Cosic created ASCII History of Moving Images in 1998 by reformatting seven historic, well-known film movies; each from a different genre, each with a different twist on the computer language he applied to the clips. ASCII (American Standard Code for Information Interchange) characters were used in place of pixels which gives the viewers the illusion of more three-dimensionality (Wikipedia). The variety of shapes and sizes of the characters gave the film images a textural quality while maintaining a simplified, flattened appearance of historic snippets of Lumiere, Eisenstein, King Kong, Star Trek,· Blow Up, Psycho and Deep Throat. First shown in Stedelijk in October 1998, you can view the seven clips at his Official History of Net.art Volume III (ljudmila.org)
He generated the film images out of monochromatic, neon green ‘light’ characters, reminiscent of computer terminals of the 1980s on a black screen background to keep the antiquated feel to his project. His fight was to keep this and other aging media alive. He used ASCII to evoke “not only a peculiar episode in the history of computer culture but a number of earlier forms of media and communication technologies as well (Cosic). It successfully represents the translation from one time to another, from one format to another, from one media to another (Shulgin).
ASCII History of Moving Images is an excellent example of Cosic efforts “to point out the radically new nature of media, staging as opposed to hiding its new properties”. As and engineer and artist (an “enginartist” perhaps), Cosic pushed the limits of standard application of computer products. As he puts it, “ the basic idea was not to accept the off-the-shelf products because it implicitly means the acceptance of the limits of the Engineer’s creativity” (Cosic).
Cosic stated his treatment of two out of seven of his film remakes. For the 1930s film Luminere he chose to superimpose digital over the image and then translate into ASCII. He applied a mosaic filter, a “Mondrian-like abstraction” for Alfred Hitchcock's Psycho. While he did not state his reasons for the rest of his selections in this project, I believe they were eye-catching (Blow Up), familiar (Star Trek) and erotic (Deep Throat). The addition of Deep Throat was a surprise but, let's face it, sex sells. Cosic actually states that it's not about the art, it's about money. More than that, it's astonishing how well the sex scene carries through pixelation using ASCII characters. Our minds seem to be able to fill in all the important parts.
One more interesting effect he added to over the screen was a "scratch". I loved the special effect the scratch line helped capture. I think it was the finishing touch to elicit the feel of very old films. It adds the same antiquated feel or familiarity we get from the Star Trek and Psycho clips. Perfect for online art, he lives up the the coined net.art label that has been attached to him.
He generated the film images out of monochromatic, neon green ‘light’ characters, reminiscent of computer terminals of the 1980s on a black screen background to keep the antiquated feel to his project. His fight was to keep this and other aging media alive. He used ASCII to evoke “not only a peculiar episode in the history of computer culture but a number of earlier forms of media and communication technologies as well (Cosic). It successfully represents the translation from one time to another, from one format to another, from one media to another (Shulgin).
ASCII History of Moving Images is an excellent example of Cosic efforts “to point out the radically new nature of media, staging as opposed to hiding its new properties”. As and engineer and artist (an “enginartist” perhaps), Cosic pushed the limits of standard application of computer products. As he puts it, “ the basic idea was not to accept the off-the-shelf products because it implicitly means the acceptance of the limits of the Engineer’s creativity” (Cosic).
Cosic stated his treatment of two out of seven of his film remakes. For the 1930s film Luminere he chose to superimpose digital over the image and then translate into ASCII. He applied a mosaic filter, a “Mondrian-like abstraction” for Alfred Hitchcock's Psycho. While he did not state his reasons for the rest of his selections in this project, I believe they were eye-catching (Blow Up), familiar (Star Trek) and erotic (Deep Throat). The addition of Deep Throat was a surprise but, let's face it, sex sells. Cosic actually states that it's not about the art, it's about money. More than that, it's astonishing how well the sex scene carries through pixelation using ASCII characters. Our minds seem to be able to fill in all the important parts.
One more interesting effect he added to over the screen was a "scratch". I loved the special effect the scratch line helped capture. I think it was the finishing touch to elicit the feel of very old films. It adds the same antiquated feel or familiarity we get from the Star Trek and Psycho clips. Perfect for online art, he lives up the the coined net.art label that has been attached to him.
References:
Cosic, Vuk, The Official History of Net.art, Volume III [internet. Available at http://www.ljudmila.org/~vuk/ascii/film/
Cosic, Vuk, Untitled Document [internet]. Available at http://www.wuk.at/kunsthalle/archiv/1999/SiQ99/e7.htm.
ljudmila.org. ASCII Architecture [internet] Available at www.ljudmila.org/~vuk/ascii/film/
Shulgin, Untitle Document [internet]. Availabel at www.wuk.at/kunsthalle/archi/1999/SiQ99/e7.htm.
Wikipedia, Vuk Cosic [internet]. Available at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vuk_%C4%86osi%C4%87
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