ANSI At Display

Project submitted by Kevin.

ANSI art is a computer art form using text characters on computers with MS-DOS (before Windows) which was popular in the late 80’s and early to mid 90’s. It was mainly used for BBSes (Bulletin Board Systems), which was software that would allow a computer to host forums, files, online games, and other services. Using a modem terminal software people would connect to the BBS over a phone line.

Around 1990, as ANSI became more popular, art groups started releasing monthly art packs to help bring the artwork together as a whole. Packs would include member and group information. Some would even include ANSI viewers to make it a lot easier to view the art.

For this show I chose two artists that inspired me the most. They were both, at one point, in the most popular art group called ACiD (Art Creators in Demand).

Chris Lewis (Lord Jazz) was probably the most known ANSI artist in the entire scene. Most artists either specialized in pictures, or fonts (letters), but rarely both. Lord Jazz was one of the small few that was extremely talented in both areas. Chris currently resides in Atlanta, Georgia and is a graphic designer and independent musician.

Jeff Lindsey (Somms) had a very unique approach to his ANSI. His style was particularly original and easily stood out. Jeff currently lives in NYC working as a producer for a video game company, sculpting on the side as a hobby.

We decided to go with the Propeller Proto Board (thank you Joe Grand) using the P8X32A-Q44 propeller chip and 64KB of EEPROM.

The Propeller Proto Boards are variousely mounted in frames made from planed construction lumber, coated with a custom blended wood stain, and then sealed with a polyeurathane finish. For a final touch we added a polish of an automotive rubbing compound. Some up and down buttons we mounted separately in the wood wiring from behind, and some right on the board. A big thanks goes out to ACCRC who helped provide the LCD’s.

The scroller program was written in Parallax’s SPIN language using a VGA driver from the object exchange and an SD card driver. The boards had enough memory to store the functionality of scrolling (thanks to Aempirei), but not enough room for the ANSI itself, the font, and color mapping. We decided to attach an SD card (thank you ASM) to store those. The SD card turned out well since we could swap the ansis out easily.

The idea was to have an inset slit around the frame of the box for the acrylic sandwiched film to slide into, going in about a quarter inch. We had the acrylic cut at tap plastics, clear 1/16th of an inch for the front and a foggy white 1/8th inch for the back. The prototypes are just logos, small ones, while the finished ones are scrollers averaging from 3-5 feet.

We determined the best way to show this artwork correctly was to give it the same look it had back in the day, lit up. Because ANSI art was solely seen on CRT monitors scrolling at 80×25 column terminals I thought a lightbox would be a pretty close, and the best way to represent it.

I found a local printing company that would print in large format in 6 color UV ink on universal back-lit film. This film is used for rich color back-lit displays, like bus shelter ads. I had two logos printed out on them and one canvas just to see what it’d look like. After reviewing the prints I realized this was the best way in which to proceed.

Here are a few samples of the completed work!

 
More Sample Pics
Video
Geek Entertainment Video

For more info contact:
Kevin (acidjazz)
acidjazz@gmail.com
http://ansi.notchill.com/