Ever since the birth of the alphanumeric computer display there have been those computer users who have wished to express their individuality in a world based on standardization and conformity. From the early days of computers, certain self-proclaimed "artists" have taken it upon themselves to transcend the standard set of letters and numbers to make something original, something exciting and something interesting to look at. It is safe to say that the majority of people in the art and design community have never heard of ANSI or RIP artwork. Even until recently the mention of computer-based "art" would invoke snide remarks and perhaps a joke about Disney’s "Tron". What these people do not know is that for over a decade now a vast network of computer-based artists and art groups has been pushing the limits of available technology and producing fascinating artwork.
In order to examine the progression and development of the underground computer art scene it is important to first understand the media, or computer formats, and how they have developed. The last ten years have seen computer technology grow at an incredible rate. Processing power doubles every six months and high-end computing equipment becomes cheaper and cheaper every day. Throughout the history of the underground computer art scene there has been a direct correlation between the power and availability of technology and the development of these different formats.
The oldest format of the underground computer art scene is the ASCII character set. Early computer "artists" were users who did not want their expression to be limited to monochromatic numbers and words. By combining the 128 standard letters, numbers, punctuation and special characters artists could create pictures and logos on their IBM, Amiga and Commodore systems. Since these works were based on the most basic shared character sets they could be viewed and created on a wide variety of computer terminals (see below). IBM also introduced its own extended 256-character set, this allowed even more freedom for ASCII artists but was not compatible with many other systems at the time. A long-time member of the underground computer art scene known as "Necromancer" describes the birth of ASCII artwork in this way:
Ascii Art as an idea coalesced into existence because people wanted more. They wanted more than just your standard Hercules display Atari or your Monochrome Commodore 64.To meet this demand, one singular artist, whose name is lost to the annals of history decided to take the plunge. Instead of text, he (or she) had the ingenuity to use the characters /, \, |, -, _ and whatever else came to mind to create words. An amazing idea. And a perfect one. People latched onto this. Anyone that could display text could display ascii art. It was fast, compact, independent of platform type,... It was perfect for Bulletin Board Systems, text-based adventures, for anything they could think of. (History of the PC Ascii Scene)
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The ASCII art scene really began to develop in the mid 1980’s when MODEM and networking technology allowed computers and computer users to communicate with one another. With the advent of networks and early Bulletin Board Systems (BBSs), ASCII art became increasingly popular. ASCII artwork soon went from being a novelty to a product in demand; system operators (SysOps) strove to set their BBSs apart from the others by displaying ASCII graphics instead of plain text. Soon thereafter a "scene" of ASCII artwork based bulletin boards and artists emerged. This was just the beginning.
As computer display technology developed there became a need for display standard that went beyond the basic ASCII character set. In 1979 a new format of computer terminal emulation was set in place by the American National Standards Institute and has been referred to in the underground art scene simply as "ANSI". This may seem misleading to people not familiar with computer emulation seeing as how the Institute sets standards for everything from kitchen cabinets to urinals. The Artpacks Archive’s Introduction to the computer art scene helps explain the ANSI format:
... we are referring to ANSI's Advanced Data Communication Control Procedure (ADCCP) X3.64-1979. But to the common computer user ANSi means just one thing: A textmode medium which consists of the standard IBM PC 256-character set, enhanced by 16 foreground colors, 8 background colors, and the ability to control and move the cursor. So, from here on, ANSI X3.64-1979 = "ANSi". (Insiders Look at ANSi)
The ANSI standard was not widely used until the mid to late 1980’s. The possibility to add colors and many special characters to the otherwise simple monochromatic ASCII designs BBSs was exciting to SysOps and users alike. Artists began creating logos and pictures out of a combination of "blocks", or the ANSI characters. Special ANSI editors or drawing programs were developed to allow artists to create and save these graphics. One of the original and most popular ANSI editors, TheDraw, included ANSI font sets along with complex selection, animation, and painting features. Bulletin Boards were soon flooded with ANSI graphics and ANSI message boards where people could post their handy-work to other users and even across a network of other systems..
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Some ANSI artists created their graphics simply for fun, others used it as a way to gain access to otherwise exclusive BBSs that dealt in the distribution of pirated software (warez), still others managed to sell their artwork to SysOps who wanted to spruce up their systems. Regardless of motive, ANSI artists soon began to get together to talk, show off and collaborate on projects. Artists began to join together and form "art groups". In the early 1990’s these groups began to distribute montly compliations of their members’ artwork known as "packs" or "art packs". The first major ANSI-based art group called Aces of ANSI Art (AAA) was soon followed by an explosion of art groups such as ANSI Creators in Demand (ACiD), and insane Creators Enterprises (iCE). Groups and members from the USA, Canada, Europe and even the Middle East were soon showing off their creations around the globe.
The emergence of the ANSI surprisingly did not result in the death of the ASCII art scene. Similar ASCII groups had already formed to display and distribute their artwork. Some ANSI groups accepted ASCII artists and ASCII graphics into their monthly releases. ASCII artists began experimenting with the colors and shapes of ANSI, while still creating forms primarily out of alphanumeric characters rather than ANSI "blocks". This amalgamation of the ANSI and ASCII standards is referred to as "new school ASCII".
Prior to the emergence of high-resolution graphics on the World Wide Web and the development of high-speed modems, a format known as Remote Imaging Protocol (RIP) was developed by a company known as Telegrafix. The RIP graphics format required support from special Bulletin Board software such as "SearchLight" as well as a special dial-up terminal such as" RIPTerm". Somewhere in between ANSI and VGA (See next section), RIP allowed BBSs to display higher-resolution pictures and text with complex shapes and sixteen editable colors (See below). The graphics were created by terminals interpretation of text code which represented shapes, lines, curves, fills and gradients. This allowed the graphics to be displayed quickly over current modem technology which ranged in speed from 2400 to 14,400 bytes per second, in comparison with today’s standard of 56,600 bytes per second. As a graphics format, RIP was not too practical and the name was all to fitting:
Unfortunately, due to the hideously proprietary nature in which their protocol was written, it failed miserably and was not accepted by the masses as they had originally planned. However, art scene members welcomed this poorly written protocol with open arms and exploited it's limitations of 640x480x16 color EGA display and animation possibilities.
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The abbreviation "VGA" stands for Video Graphics Adapter, a reference to the cards or chips that allow a computer to display high resolution pictures and text on a monitor. Much like ANSI is a general term for the graphics created using the ANSI standard, VGA was used to talk about graphics that have a high pixel resolution and color depth anywhere from 256 to sixteen million colors. Unlike ANSI or ASCII, VGA graphics are encoded in binary files that specify the color, position and attributes of each pixel. Early VGAs were usually limited to 320 by 240 pixels and 256 colors or below because they would soon become quite large and cumbersome files that were not quick and easy to download from BBSs. While created before the RIP graphics standard, VGA graphics were not capable of being displayed over traditional BBSs due to their high-resolution and relatively large size. A few BBS programs such as "RoboBoard" attempted to incorporate VGA graphics into their systems but could not compete with the speed and ease of use of traditional ANSI based systems. VGA graphics required a special viewing program such as the formerly popular "CompuShow" in order to display correctly, they could not simply be loaded onto the users text-based screen like ASCII and ANSI could.
While AMIGA computers were far more graphically advanced than the IBM based computers of the early 1990’s, the majority of the scene had become IBM based due to their relative cheapness and extensive software support. Because of this, most VGAs were created in rather simple "paint" programs such as Autodesk’s Animator Pro or Paint Shop (See below). These programs introduced the first "virtual" versions of real-world tools such as the paintbrush and airbrush. Other VGA artists began "drawing" in 3d using early formula and number-driven three-dimensional visualization programs such as "POV-Ray".
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As modem speed increased and demand for new forms of computer art continued, art groups began including VGA graphics and small VGA programs known as "loaders" into their packs. Some groups helped spurn the popularity of VGA by pushing it beyond the limits of what people thought their computers were capable of doing. Sophisticated programs known as "demos" became instantly popular and spun off into an entirely new scene known as the Demo Scene (See Appendix 2). In the mean time, the ASCII and ANSI based groups started to develop their own file viewers so that people would be able to view the VGA, ANSI, ASCII and RIP graphics in one convenient interface without having to switch between programs or display modes.
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From a scene concerned primarily with the visual arts, an unlikely addition appeared, electronic literary art, or lit. In a computer-world based primarily on letters and numbers it only seems logical that there be a large community of writers and poets. Some "traditional" underground computer artists began extending their creativity into the written word, incorporating it into their artwork. Other writers took a cue from existing underground art groups and formed groups of their own, releasing monthly compendiums of their creations. While there was some opposition from visual artists about the credibility of these new "artists", lit still managed to find its place in the underground computer art scene. Large multi-format groups such as the Creators of Intense Art (CIA) had their own literary art departments and many electronic magazines such as "Psygnosis" merged the world of ANSI and Literature into one attractive package.
It is safe to say that ANSI and ASCII artwork enjoyed the height of popularity in the early to mid 1990’s with the height of the BBS scene. The recent explosion of the World Wide Web and the slow but certain demise of Bulletin Board Systems would suggest that these simple and outdated formats are now almost extinct. This, however, is not the case. Today there are still groups of artists that deal primarily with ASCII or ANSI and their artwork has surpassed almost everything done in the mid 1990’s in skill, scale and complexity. New ASCII and ANSI drawing programs such as "ACiDdraw" have been developed and others such as "CIADraw" are still being developed today in order surpass past editors and meet the demands of today’s advanced artists. ASCII art enjoys a new-found popularity among today’s computer users in e-mail messages and on terminal-based network stations. ANSI survives in text-mode based electronic magazines and on most remaining BBSs (some of which now have internet connections). More importantly, however, these formats survive because there are hundreds of artists who continue to create and exchange amazing ASCII and ANSI artwork. No longer a functional necessity, these formats are used by artists simply because they love them. There is no fame or fortune to be had in ASCII or ANSI artwork, just a feeling of pride and accomplishment, and the challenge of pushing a decade-old medium beyond its already constricting limits to create something beautiful.
Even more surprising, perhaps, is the continued support of the RIP format. While far surpassed in features and resolution by current graphics programs, RIP remains to be used just to create interesting pictures with a nod to the past. The recent emergence of a RIP-only underground art group proves that many members of the underground computer art scene have a love of computer art that is independent from the practicality or functionality of the chosen medium.
The simple, small and somewhat awkward VGA graphics of the early 1990’s have seen perhaps the most amazing transformation. Advancements in computer display and modem technology, continually falling hardware costs, amazing new software and the overwhelming popularity of the World Wide Web has ushered in a new age for the VGA medium. Now referred to as High Resolution Artwork (hires/hirez), it makes up a very large portion of today’s underground computer art scene. Artists now enjoy a wide range of high-quality drawing, painting, illustration and 3d graphics creation tools such as Photoshop, Painter or Softimage.
Hirez artwork is perhaps the first medium to really successfully transcend the boundaries of the underground scene. Artists no longer have to rely on underground art packs to display their work, as millions of people can view it in its original format via the world-wide web or graphical operating systems such as MacOS and Windows. Additionally, the skills that an underground computer hirez artist learns and displays can often lead to jobs in web, game or movie/broadcast design industries. High resolution artists may be the first members of the underground computer art scene to be recognized by traditional art circles as the concept of digital fine art slowly becomes increasingly accepted.
For years now there have been people within this art scene who have predicted the demise of ASCII, ANSI and RIP artwork; so far they have all been wrong. Surprising as it may be, new talent continues to emerge working in one or several of these formats. While countless groups have disappeared from the underground computer art scene over the years, several major players in the shaping of its history remain and new groups continue spring up all the time. While the popularity and production of these formats has slowed down, it seems that as long as there are people who know about and love ASCII, ANSI and RIP artwork, it will continue to be created. Necromancer’s view of the future of the ASCII scene sum up the attitudes of die-hard ASCII, ANSI and RIP artists throughout the scene:
But have faith. We will prevail. We were here before you, and we will be here long after you. Ascii art has existed since before people used hard drives, back when you had to plug your Commodore 64 into the TV. It's not just an art form, it's an expression, a style. The creative process can never be stifled completely, and we will overcome.