Leo Ferre
Print
1968 (made)
1968 (made)
Artist/Maker | |
Place of origin |
This portrait of poet and musician Léo Ferré (1916 –1993) is composed entirely of the computer characters M, W, O, and *. Created in 1968 by artist Jaume Estapà, it is an early example of ASCII art, a term used to refer to text based art. ASCII stands for American Standard Code for Information Interchange, which was a character coding created to enable the representation of text in computers. Early computer printers were not able to output graphical images and so characters were used instead of graphic marks.
Traditionally ASCII art is formed from any number of printable characters out of a total of 95. In this image, Estapa has employed only a small number of symbols and has overprinted to define areas of dark or shade. The alternate light grey stripes of the background were a characteristic of early computer printing paper. They were designed to make it easier to follow lines when reading printed code or wording.
Works such as this portrait were produced using an early form of impact printer, such as a daisy wheel printer. The daisy wheel printer housed a central disc with extended arms or 'petals' that contained raised characters. The printer would rotate to the correct character, which would then be struck by a hammer and forced onto the printer ribbon beneath, leaving a printed impression on the paper. Daisy wheel printers were noisy and could only print around 10 to 75 characters per second. By the 1980s they had been replaced by inkjet and laser printers, which were much cheaper and faster.
Traditionally ASCII art is formed from any number of printable characters out of a total of 95. In this image, Estapa has employed only a small number of symbols and has overprinted to define areas of dark or shade. The alternate light grey stripes of the background were a characteristic of early computer printing paper. They were designed to make it easier to follow lines when reading printed code or wording.
Works such as this portrait were produced using an early form of impact printer, such as a daisy wheel printer. The daisy wheel printer housed a central disc with extended arms or 'petals' that contained raised characters. The printer would rotate to the correct character, which would then be struck by a hammer and forced onto the printer ribbon beneath, leaving a printed impression on the paper. Daisy wheel printers were noisy and could only print around 10 to 75 characters per second. By the 1980s they had been replaced by inkjet and laser printers, which were much cheaper and faster.
Object details
Category | |
Object type | |
Title | Leo Ferre (assigned by artist) |
Materials and techniques | Impact print on paper |
Brief description | Computer print out on computer paper, 'Leo Ferre', by Jaume Estapà, 1968. |
Physical description | Impact print; depicts a portrait made up of computer characters M and 0. |
Dimensions |
|
Marks and inscriptions |
|
Credit line | Given by the Computer Arts Society, supported by System Simulation Ltd, London |
Subject depicted | |
Summary | This portrait of poet and musician Léo Ferré (1916 –1993) is composed entirely of the computer characters M, W, O, and *. Created in 1968 by artist Jaume Estapà, it is an early example of ASCII art, a term used to refer to text based art. ASCII stands for American Standard Code for Information Interchange, which was a character coding created to enable the representation of text in computers. Early computer printers were not able to output graphical images and so characters were used instead of graphic marks. Traditionally ASCII art is formed from any number of printable characters out of a total of 95. In this image, Estapa has employed only a small number of symbols and has overprinted to define areas of dark or shade. The alternate light grey stripes of the background were a characteristic of early computer printing paper. They were designed to make it easier to follow lines when reading printed code or wording. Works such as this portrait were produced using an early form of impact printer, such as a daisy wheel printer. The daisy wheel printer housed a central disc with extended arms or 'petals' that contained raised characters. The printer would rotate to the correct character, which would then be struck by a hammer and forced onto the printer ribbon beneath, leaving a printed impression on the paper. Daisy wheel printers were noisy and could only print around 10 to 75 characters per second. By the 1980s they had been replaced by inkjet and laser printers, which were much cheaper and faster. |
Collection | |
Accession number | E.355-2009 |
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Record created | June 30, 2009 |
Record URL |
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