Art and Technology (JC)

As a kid, ASCII art was amazing and impossible to me. I was confident (at the time) that people used custom characters, or some program, or had simply drawn them and posted them as a .jpg, or that they had a computer analyze their drawing and turn it into characters. I especially thought this after completing Portal, a video game released by Valve. The end credits had a bunch of animated ASCII art. I've always wanted to create ASCII art. But every attempt is swathed by my always being too daunted, or thought there were better ways to articulate myself, or thought it was too much work unnecessarily. I think it would pose a challenge (beyond my attempt, even) to thinking about how to design something. Do you do it line by line? Do you create one object and then the others? What are the most effective ways to move your cursor around a word doc? All of these pose a challenge that is unconventional.

      The contemporary printer has made many changes and spun off in numerous different ways by a handful of companies; yet it still manages to break regularly. It's based on one of the most important technological advancements in human history, which is writing stuff down, and is also one of the oldest. You would think, after all these years, that humanity would have figured this out by now. But no. It still sucks.       The historical origin of the contemporary printer (namely, the XEROX WorkCentre 7845i) starts with a written record of anything. It starts with how man left his mark on nature in a meaningful or interesting way. Whether it was an arrangement of rocks in a river, a humble cave abode with plank wood over the entrance and cave art on the walls, or even mutilated animals in the forest. Sure, that's a scary image. But it's also pretty interesting so it counts. This eventually develops into a more advanced version which is the development of paper and pen. The

I wanted to do something I was passionate about. It's hard to explain passed that. I think this piece says a lot about my inspirations (namely Don Hertzfeldt) and also my expectations. I was honestly surprised by how fluidly it turned out. Haterz hate it but I did what I could. Hope you enjoy.