Final presentation - ASCII History of Moving Images

http://www.ljudmila.org/~vuk/ascii/film/

INTRODUCTION

 

Name: ASCII - History of Moving Images

Artist: Vuk Cosic

Year: 1998

Display on the UC Berkeley Art Museum
and Pacific Film Archive Net Art online gallery

 

ASCII History of Moving Images is a Net.art project.It is a remade of the scenes of seven well-known classic movies and TV programmes, including Lumiere, Eisenstein, King kong, Star trek, Blow up, Psycho and Deep throat, into moving images by using ASCII characters.

ASCII stands for American Standard Code for Information Interchange. It is a character-encoding system with 95 printable characters. In the 1980s, due to the limitations of the graphical capability of computers, people used ASCII characters to represent graphics. In the 1990s, it is popular for using ASCII characters to decorate email messages. And Cosic extended the usage of ASCII to create moving images.

Cosic captured scenes of the original work, and then reformatted each frame into an image with ASCII characters. We can see the figures, objects, lighting and texture in the image are all composed by the green on black characters. And finally the frames run quickly to form a short animation.

FEATURES

The artwork shared the following common features with earlier art movement such as Dada.

1. Emphasis on concept rather than the art object

The real images were recoded into digital language, letters and characters was concerned as form, but not merely as language.

2. Event and audience participation

The artwork is available to everyone who can access to the internet. And it provoke our thought and investigate into the deeper message of the work to draw our own reflection.
Also, we can be inspired generate our own ASCII images by using software, after watching the artwork.

MY OPINION

I think this artwork brings us interesting visual experience. Texts and images are visible at the same time. When we find the image is clear to recognize, we can get the enjoyment from the story development. When we find the image is very abstract, and even don't know what it is, we still have spaces for imagination.

Moreover, I think this work is very thought-provoking. It makes me to have a reflection about the rapid development of technology, a lots of high tech products are surrounding us in our daily life, we may easily have the tendency to only the usefulness of things. Therefore many old method and technology was eliminated and being forgotten. For instance, ASCII was already replaced by other system such as Unicode; the original work of films was labelled as outmoded. If we compare the ASCII images with the digital images nowadays, we may consider the former as old, simple and crude. But the pleasure, enjoyment and reflections that brought by the ASCII images are not less than the latter one.


KEY QUOTES

'' [My] works and experiments with moving ASCII... [are] carefully directed at their full uselessness from the viewpoint of everyday high tech and all its consequences. I try to look into the past and continue the upgrading of marginalized or forgotten technology.''                        - Vuk Cosic

Mark Tribe, New Media Art, Germany: Taschen Benedikt Verlag Gmbh, 2009. p,38.

'' His ASCII films perform the new status of media as digital data. The result is as satisfying poetically as it is conceptually, for what we get is a double image, a recognizable film image and an abstract code together. Both are visible at once.''                                                    - Lev Manovich

Lev Manovich, The Language of New Media, Cambridge: MIT Press, 2001,p. 224.

REFERENCES

Mark Tribe, New Media Art, Germany: Taschen Benedikt Verlag Gmbh, 2009.
Lev Manovich, The Language of New Media, Cambridge: MIT Press, 2001.

Youtube

How many viewers are estimated to have watched the youtube video?
About 4 billion viewers in total.

How would you rate the video?

- Is it of high quality in technical terms? Is it interesting aesthetically eg camera angles, use of light, the narrative and so on?

Yes, the techniques used in the work are high quality and interesting aesthetically, especially the editing skill. The video maker captured different frame to match up the background music. And even tuned the pitch of Brown to composed as a song.

Do you think it deserved the attention that it received from the internet community?

Yes, it deserved to received attention from the internet community. Although the video does not raise any socio-cultural issues or messages, but an interesting speech from a woman who was interviewed on the news. However, the exaggerated and humourous reaction of the woman, and the brilliant copies of work, really brings a lot of joyfulness to audiences. Therefore, I think it deserved to received such great attention.

Do you see videos such as "Bus uncle"and its copies or Chris Crocker "Leave Britney Alone" and its copies as a good addition to creative culture?

Yes, it is a good addition to creative culture. Those copies of work have added new elements into the original work, it makes the work become more interesting. It can also inspire other people to express their new ideas freely.

Is the wide availability of such videos a good thing for society or not?

The wide availability of such videos brings advertages but also disadvertages to the society.

For the positive impact, these kind of video is a good addition to creative culture. People experienced more freedom to express their ideas in such interesting way. And different kinds of social issues can be raised in such way, to gain more public attention.

For the negetative impact, the freedom of creating videos may be abused. When every people can freely captured or re-created the videos of strangers, it may come into conflict with the right of privacy.

Interview video about technologised body

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O9oBCIABvIE